Shadow on the Crown (20 page)

His response, when it came, was scrawled on a wax tablet. She had to study it for some time before she could decipher it.

I will grant this request, but push me no further. For too long have you neglected the duties owed to your king. My patience is nearly at an end.

So she had bought herself a little time—perhaps a month, but no more. She must content herself with that.

Almost as soon as the king and his court departed, the spring weather turned from sunshine to grim, unrelenting rain. Under its spell the mood in the queen’s apartments became as somber and listless as Emma herself, and she could not rouse herself to change it. Elgiva, apparently irritated that the king had left her behind, was sullen and ill-tempered, using her tongue to lash anyone who crossed her. Servants whispered of a malignant spirit that had cursed the queen and so caused the death of her unborn child. Alarmed by the rumors, Wymarc insisted that Emma wear every piece of amber jewelry that she owned, for amber was a talisman against evil. Margot, too, sought to break the spell that held the queen, placing rosemary under Emma’s pillow to give her pleasant dreams. Yet the shadow of hopelessness that seemed to enfold Emma like a shroud refused to lift.

In the end it was young Edward who drew Emma from her despair. An ague had kept him from accompanying his father to London, and a week or so after the king’s departure, the boy’s condition worsened. Emma ordered a servant to carry Edward into her own chamber, where she and Margot could tend him, and suddenly her days had a purpose and a meaning. Hour after hour she sat at Edward’s bedside, placing cool cloths upon his fevered skin, coaxing spoonfuls of Margot’s willow bark infusion past his chapped lips, lulling the restless boy to sleep with stories of Normandy. But Edward’s condition did not improve, and Emma’s heart ached at his suffering. She sent a messenger to London, advising the king that Edward’s illness was grave; then she waited, daily anticipating Æthelred’s return.

It was late one May evening that a royal party arrived within the palace grounds. The king, Emma surmised, had come at last. She glanced toward the shadowy corner where Margot, who would keep the long night watch, sat dozing. All of her other attendants were abed, and she saw no reason to summon them. The king’s staff would see to his immediate needs, and it may be some time yet before he came to find his son.

Edward lay shirtless beneath the bed linens, and Emma repeatedly bathed his face and upper body with cool water in an effort to banish the fever that held him in restless dreams. His hair had been cut short so they could tend him more easily, and he looked far younger than his eleven summers. He moaned in his sleep, and as Emma took his hot hand in hers, a servant slipped into the room to whisper that Lord Athelstan was asking to see his brother.

She started at this, but in a moment her heart lifted, as if some great weight she had been carrying had suddenly slipped away. She bade the servant escort the ætheling into the chamber, then she tried to ignore the trembling of her limbs as she waited for him in the near darkness. There were a thousand things that she longed to say to Athelstan. Every day the pile of words that remained unspoken between them grew higher and broader. Yet the words she would speak were utterly forbidden, and so she must remain forever mute. Just to have him near, though, would be some consolation.

She rose as he entered the room, and in the dim candlelight she drank in the sight of him—the thatch of bright hair, the startlingly dark eyebrows, the wide mouth, the beard the color of raw honey, the solemn blue eyes.

He paused in front of her, and as their glances met she read there the same gravity—cold and distant—with which he had greeted her ever since her return to court. It chilled her like a winter wind.

He gestured for her to sit and, drawing a stool next to her chair, took his place beside her.

“My father received your message but matters keep him in London, and he sent me to learn how Edward is faring.” Awkwardly, he touched Edward’s cheek with the back of his hand. “Jesu, he is so hot.”

“I am frightened for him,” she whispered, studying Edward’s face, as she had for days, looking for some sign of improvement. She did not find it. Flushed with fever, his nose thin and pinched with lack of nourishment, he barely resembled the brown-faced boy who had ridden with them along the Itchen the summer before. “My sister suffered from agues all her life, but I cannot remember that she was ever as sick as this. Edward complains of pains in his arms and legs, and of a scalding in his throat. Nothing we do eases him.”

She glanced at Athelstan and saw a shadow cross his face. Her words had alerted him to his brother’s danger, and it pained her to be the one to deliver such evil tidings. Yet it was better that he know now what may have to be faced all too soon.

“My father,” he said, his eyes still on the boy, “has asked the bishop and all the clergy in London to offer prayers for his recovery. Do you hear that, Edward? All of London is praying for you now.”

She, too, had prayed for Edward, but her prayers had sprung from a bitter heart, and God had not answered her.

“Perhaps God will listen to them,” she said. “He has not listened to me.” The rage that had lain coiled within her, suppressed in silence and in bitter tears, sprang suddenly to life. “Why is God so cruel?” she demanded, fisting her hands and beating them impotently against her knees. She longed to weep, but she would not give God the satisfaction. “Why does He punish innocent children for the sins of others?”

Athelstan heard the despair in her voice, and it smote his heart. She was his father’s wife, and for that reason he had schooled himself to look upon her with a stern regard that showed neither pity nor compassion. He could not do so now. Her anguished eyes, bruised with weariness, were fixed upon Edward, but he guessed that she must be thinking as well of the babe that she had lost. If God was cruel, then Emma was as much a victim of His cruelty as poor Edward. She had lost her own child, and now she lived in fear of losing a son that she had embraced as her own.

He searched for words that would give her consolation, but what did he know of the mind of God? He was a warrior, not a priest. His duty was to fight, and it was up to the priests to sort things out with the Lord. Yet how was anyone to fight and win against the will of the Almighty? How was one even to recognize God’s hand at work in the world when there was so much darkness and misery?

Emma, though, needed consolation, however clumsy it might be.

“We are God’s instruments for vengeance or for mercy, are we not?” he asked gently. “So if you would look for the hand of God in Edward’s illness,” he took hold of her hand, and held it before her, “look to the hands that have given him relief from pain and have tended him with a mother’s care.”

It did not content her, though. She shook her head, drew her hand from his, and gently ministered again to Edward. His brother’s thin face was no longer flushed but eerily pale now in the flickering light.

What if Edward should die? He had never thought much about death, in spite of the hundreds of sermons he had heard detailing man’s ultimate fate in the most harrowing terms. Even now he could not reconcile himself to the prospect of a world without Edward, for he was but a boy. It seemed impossible that he should die. Yet children, even the children of kings, did die. His own father was the only one of three brothers to survive to manhood.

Unbidden, the words of the seeress at Warwick sprang into his mind. She had predicted that he would not inherit his father’s kingdom. He could not fathom such an outcome—unless he were to die before his father did. Was that what she had been trying to tell him? Was that to be God’s will—his destiny as well as Edward’s?

He scrubbed his face briskly with his hands, trying to rid his mind of such morbid thoughts. At the same moment, Emma gave a small cry. When he looked he saw her leaning forward, her palms pressed against Edward’s breast.

“What is it?” he demanded, tense with foreboding.

“I don’t know,” she cried. “Something has happened. Margot!”

In an instant the old Norman dame appeared from out of the shadows and shooed them away from the bed. She bent over Edward, setting her ear against his mouth, then touching his neck with her fingers. Athelstan held his breath.

Dear God. Had his mortal thoughts somehow beckoned Death to his brother’s side?

When the old nurse called for a servant and turned to Emma, placing her hands on the queen’s shoulders, he felt a chill run from his spine to his fingertips. He closed his eyes, and through a fog of despair and grief he heard the old woman rattle something in a burst of Norman French. Although he could not comprehend her words, he knew that Edward must be dead.

He drew in a heavy breath and opened his eyes to find Emma before him, her face lit with joy and relief. She took his hand.

“The fever has broken, my lord,” she said. “God has answered our prayers at last.”

He looked past her to where Edward lay profoundly asleep, oblivious to the women who now went about the task of changing his damp, tumbled linens.

“Can it be true?” he asked, hardly daring to believe it. “Could the tide of his illness turn so swiftly?”

“He is far from well yet,” Emma murmured, “but Margot says that now he should begin to mend.” She smiled, but her eyes were filled with tears. “Perhaps he heard you when you spoke to him, and it was your voice that drew him back to us. He would do anything for you. You are his hero; did you know that?”

He shook his head, wondering what else Emma knew about Edward that he did not. She still gripped his hands, and for his part, he had no wish to let her go. He wanted to pull her close and enfold her in his arms as if he had the right to do so. But he did not have that right, and the awareness of it tortured him so that he loosed her hands and frowned at her.

“Edward’s recovery is none of my doing,” he said. “It was your care that saved him, and so I will tell my father.” He glanced again at the bed. “I will leave for London in the morning. May I visit him again before I go?”

“Of course,” she said, “but I cannot promise that he will be awake when you come. Can you not send a messenger to your father? It will do Edward good to have you here for a time, however brief it may be.”

“I cannot stay. The king would have me return to London tomorrow.” He saw that his curt reply had wounded her, but he could think of no way to dull the sharp edge of duty that must always lie like a sword between them.

“Of course, my lord,” she said stiffly. “I will bid you good night then.”

He nodded to her and walked quickly from the room. He was sorely tempted to stay, and that would be a grave error indeed.

In the moments after Athelstan left, Emma felt as cold and empty as a bell that has lost its tongue. She longed to follow him, to crawl into his arms and feel their warmth and strength, to feel the comfort of his touch once more. But there was no place for her in Athelstan’s arms, for he was not her lord nor ever would be.

A moment later Margot was at her side, urging her to lie down and sleep, but there was something else that she must do first. She wrapped her shawl close around her, called for a light bearer, and made her way behind him through several passages to the tiny private chapel that had been set up by Æthelred’s first wife. Emma did not like this place, for it was little more than a barren closet with nothing about it to offer comfort to a weary soul. Nevertheless, tonight she slipped inside and dropped to her knees before the altar. She whispered a prayer of thanksgiving for the gift of Edward’s life, and she asked God’s forgiveness for her doubts and her sins. She offered Him a promise as well. She would no longer shirk her duties as Æthelred’s wife and queen, and she would shut her heart to temptation.

Chapter Nineteen

June 1003

Winchester, Hampshire

T
he king returned to Winchester at the head of a long train of retainers and under a fierce sun that had frayed his already short temper. A month spent in the bishop’s London palace had forced him into celibacy, and to make matters worse his high eccleiastics had spent the time chastising him for ignoring his marital duties to his queen. He would rectify that soon enough, though. He would soon put her on her back, for she had kept him at bay for too long.

It was nearing twilight when he dismounted in the palace yard and tossed his reins to a groom. There would be food awaiting him in the hall, but he had business with the queen first. As he made his way to her apartments a small crowd of petitioners surrounded him, every one of them yammering pleas, none of which would have interested him even if he could have deciphered the gabble. He forced his way through them, although not before some enterprising lout had thrust a bit of parchment into his hand, which he palmed and then forgot.

He strode purposefully into the queen’s quarters, ascended the stairs, and flung open the chamber door. Emma and her priest sat at a table covered with letters. A knot of women sat off to one side, fluttering and clucking until they saw him and fell into silent obeisance.

“Get out,” he grunted.

Emma had already risen to her feet, and she nodded to the priest, who scrambled to gather up the scrolls.

“Leave those,” Æthelred ordered.

The chamber emptied quickly, and he turned to Emma. She stood her ground, facing him with that stiff little chin of hers angled upward and one eyebrow cocked with curiosity.

He had a matter to raise with her that would wipe that smug look from her face, but it could wait. Grasping her wrist he made for the inner chamber, tugging her after him.

“Don’t pretend that you do not know why I am here,” he growled, slinging her toward the bed that lay hidden behind lush hangings.

He did not bother to ask after her health, for he wanted no excuses. The last time he had favored her with his intimacy she had resisted him. He would have none of that today.

He watched with satisfaction as she shed her gown and shift. Dropping the bit of rolled parchment he’d been handed, he discarded his belt, tunic, breecs, and hose. When he turned again to Emma, he was surprised at how quickly he was aroused by the sight of her lying naked on the sheets, her white thighs obligingly spread to receive him. He wasted no time, spilling his seed into her vigorously and swiftly. Afterward, spent, he lay sprawled on top of her enjoying the scent and the feel of her woman’s flesh. Then he raised himself on his forearms to study her face.

The light in the chamber was dim, for only a single oil lamp hanging from a chain near the door threw its glow across the bed. It was enough, though, for now.

Emma shifted beneath him in an effort to push him away.

“May I get up, my lord?” she asked.

“Nay, lady. We are not finished yet, you and I.” Her pale braid had come undone during their coupling, and now he toyed with a long lock of her hair, wrapping it about his finger absently as he watched her face. “Tell me what you know of your brother’s new alliance with the Danish king.”

She gave him a look as guileless as a child’s. “I know nothing,” she said. “My brother has not confided in me.”

He cocked an eyebrow, considering her reply. It might be the truth. His spies had not reported any missives from Normandy that spoke of an alliance with Swein Forkbeard. Still, he did not quite trust her.

“Your brother has been remiss, then,” he said, tugging at the blond tress so that she winced, “for he is, indeed, negotiating with Swein.”

“Perhaps it is some matter of trade—”

“Even so,” he said, and now he pulled harder to make sure that he had her attention. “What do you think they are likely to trade between them? I shall tell you. Poor English folk dragged from their homes to be sold as slaves, shiploads of silver, and booty from English towns.”

And there was the little matter of Swein’s revenge for the death of his sister on St. Brice’s feast day. In London the bishops had railed at him interminably about the likelihood of the Danish king’s vengeance, and though he had made light of it, his own fear of Swein’s retaliation gnawed at his gut like an incurable, weeping wound.

Emma was squirming beneath him now in a vain effort to ease the pain he was inflicting.

“Stop it,” she hissed.

But he had no intention of stopping. With his other hand he twisted another bright strand about his fingers and pulled that as well. She would have clawed him like a she-cat, he guessed, but he’d taken the precaution of pinning her arms at her sides.

“Earthly pain leads to greater glory in heaven, does it not?” he asked. “Be submissive to life’s afflictions, lady, and you will find them easier to bear. I’ve told you that before.”

“Tell me what you want,” she said through clenched teeth.

He smiled, but he did not ease the pressure. It would take far more than this to break Emma, but he would master her eventually, hopefully before her belly swelled again.

“I would have you remember that you are the queen of the English and no longer a tool of the Norman duke,” he replied. “You will write to your brother and remind him of his promises to me. It would be unfortunate if he should commit himself to an alliance that you, more than anyone else, might regret. Do you understand me?”

There were tears in her eyes now, though she did not weep. She was cold, this one. Even in her pain, Emma did not weep.

“I understand,” she ground out.

“Good. I shall expect to see the letter tomorrow.”

To remind her of her task, he snagged the tender flesh beneath her ear with his teeth. When she flinched, he grinned. His queen did not have Elgiva’s taste for sexual adventure.

He rather missed Elgiva, but there were other women at court to satisfy him.

He rolled off of his lady wife and watched, amused, as she slipped from the bed, drew on a robe, and stalked across the chamber and well out of his reach.

“What were those letters I saw you poring over with the priest?” he asked.

“They are from my reeve in Exeter.”

“Bring them to me. And light some candles. It is too dark in here.” She lit a taper at the lamp, and one by one set all the candles in the room blazing.

“You have not asked about your ailing son,” she said.

“What about him?” He reached for the flagon beside the bed and poured himself a cup of wine. “His fever is gone, is it not?” He tossed back the wine and poured more.

“He tires easily. I am concerned for him.”

He grunted. The children were
her
concern, not his.

“He goes to Headington next week with the rest of them,” he said. “He will be well tended there. Bring me those scrolls.”

She fetched them, then began to dress herself while he sat on the edge of the bed, looking over each missive as he drank a second and third cup of wine. There were reports from her reeve, as she had said, as well as a petition from a host of Devonshire landholders urging Emma to visit her properties in the southwest.

Of course they would want her to make a royal progress to her dower lands. After all, it had been the southern nobles who had supported her as his bride in preference to Elgiva. They wished to curry her favor now, get her among them and fete her in the hope of solidifying her royal patronage. He’d had a letter from one of his Devonshire thegns some months ago suggesting just such a journey. He had dismissed it at the time. Now, though, he thought, fondling his cup as he considered the idea, things had changed.

If Duke Richard had allied himself with King Swein, then for the next four months all of England’s southern coast would be at risk of attack from ships striking across the Narrow Sea, and England’s fleet was too small to patrol that long sweep of coast. So what if he were to use Emma as a shield for the western shires? If he placed her in Devonshire and made certain that her brother knew of it, Richard would doubtless seek to protect Emma and her lands by urging his Danish allies to aim their strikes further east. That would leave him with only half of the coast to defend. It was perfect.

He tossed the scrolls onto the bed and began to dress.

“You will make that progress through your dower lands,” he told her. “The southern lords would take it amiss if you refuse them. I will send Ealdorman Ælfric and his men to escort you. And now I think on it, you may wish to stop at some of the shrines along your route and pray that your womb will soon be fruitful again.”

He watched her face as she weighed his words, and the consternation he read there amused him. Emma wanted a child. It was not obedience that had driven her to spread her legs for him today but the hope that his seed would take root within her. A son would garner her more lands, more money from his own purse, and even more support from the bishops than she had now. Once Emma had a son she would be a force to be reckoned with, something his damned bishops seemed unable to grasp. Well, they could hardly expect him to bed her if she wasn’t here, which would leave him free to seek his pleasure elsewhere. And Emma would have to wait a little longer for that child.

She made no reply to his suggestion but turned away from him, fingers busily braiding her hair. He pulled on his breecs and his tunic, and then noticed the small scroll that lay on the floor. Languidly he reached for it, glancing quickly at its lines of script.

And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand.

He stiffened, the menace in the words as palpable as a physical blow.

Christ, what fiend had given him this?

He tried to visualize the faces that had surrounded him in the palace yard, but he had taken too little notice of the rabble. He read again the baleful words—the Almighty’s curse upon Cain. As his mind quailed from the threat it carried, he felt, to his horror, a menacing cold come upon him.

He guessed what the chill portended, but surely he had to be wrong. He had freed himself of his brother’s vengeful shade when he had rid himself of the Danes who had schemed to destroy him. The fetch was gone! It could not come again to hound him. Even God would not be so cruel!

He steeled mind and body against the panic rising within him, but the growing cold clasped him in its unrelenting embrace, its icy tendrils reaching beneath his flesh to clutch at his heart. The scroll slipped from his hands, and his eyes, frozen wide, could only stare into a void that swirled and spun. All light fled the chamber, and in the darkness his brother’s glowering visage shivered before him like an unsteady flame, filling his soul with dread.

This time, though, he refused to succumb to the numbing terror. A rage sparked within him, bright as a glowing coal. He wanted to throttle the horror that faced him, to channel all his fear and fury into a lightning bolt of violence that would shatter this fiendish exhalation and send it back to hell. He struggled against the invisible bonds that held him, but he was spellbound, encased in a shroud of ice.

“Why?” he howled, wrenching the word out of the depths of his soul. “Speak, damn you! What do you want of me?”

There was no answer, and with a strangled curse and a supreme effort of will he raised his arm and dashed the wine cup at his brother’s face. Edward’s shade neither moved nor spoke but merely stared at him with empty eyes while time seemed to stand still.

In those endless moments Æthelred felt a desperate weariness come over him, and a chilling heaviness in his chest, as if a stone lay upon it. He tried again to shut his eyes, but he could only stare into Edward’s bloodied face, until at last the shadow slowly receded and the chamber glowed with light and warmth again.

Freed at last from his brother’s grasp, he sank to the bed and wept.

Emma stood transfixed, her eyes flicking between her weeping lord and the red stain on the wall where the cup had shattered. How many eternities, she wondered, had passed while she stood here, bewildered and aghast, watching as the king struggled against some invisible threat that drove him past distraction into madness?

She began to breathe again as she realized that whatever had held him in thrall seemed to have set him free now, for even the king’s weeping had ceased. Yet she made no move to go to him. The memory of his petty cruelty was too fresh in her mind, and she could not be sure that he would not turn his rage upon her. So she stood, immobile, uncertain what to do.

“I am cold,” he whispered.

The words held a plea that she could not ignore, pulling her from her trance. She snatched up her robe and went to him, wrapping the thick fur and wool about his shoulders.

“My lord, I fear you are ill,” she said. His face was white and waxen, like a candle melted in the sun.

“Burn it,” he whispered.

She frowned. Burn what? She glanced at the parchments tumbled around him on the bed.

“The scroll,” he said, gesturing to something on the floor nearby. “Burn it!”

She spotted it then, a scrap the size of her finger. Was this the cause of his madness? Could so small a thing scatter the wits of a king? She picked it up, sorely tempted to unroll and read it first, but Æthelred was watching her with eyes sharp as blue steel. Obediently, she fed the scroll to the lamp’s flame.