Shadow on the Crown (21 page)

“What is it?” she asked.

“No business of yours. Just do what you’re told, damn you,” he said, his words slurred from the wine.

She watched it burn, aware that it might hold the key to the puzzle that was Æthelred of England, and it was with a bitter pang of frustration that she dropped the last bit into the lamp and watched it curl to ash.

She heard him heave a great sigh, and she turned to look at him. Some color had returned to his face, but the weariness had not left it. He looked sick and haggard, with dark crescents beneath his eyes. He was a man who slept but little, she knew, and not for the first time she wondered what dark dreams troubled his rest. Now she watched him slough off her robe and rise to his feet, but slowly, as if he were still burdened with a great weight.

“Tomorrow,” he said, his voice leaden, “you will deliver to me the letter for your brother, and you will begin preparations for your journey to Exeter.”

He left her then, his gait slow and heavy, while she stood in stunned silence, her ear attuned to the sound of his retreating footsteps.

When she was certain he was gone she went, trembling, to her great chair and sat down, steepling her hands in front of her as she considered what had just occurred. She knew little of men, for she had ever dwelt in a world of women. But she was beginning to know this hard and brutal man who was her husband and her king. And the more she knew him, the more she feared him.

Yet surely her fears were as nothing beside his. Æthelred, it seemed to her, feared everyone. That he mistrusted
her
did not surprise her. She was a foreigner, and in spite of her marriage vows, he could not be certain of her allegiance until she bore him a son, and perhaps not even then. She understood this. But Æthelred mistrusted and feared his counselors, and even his own sons. He perceived Athelstan, in particular, as a dangerous rival and a threat. Had there been some warning about Athelstan in the missive that she had burned? She could not believe it. Athelstan had a pure heart, and God knew, there were any number of enemies who might threaten a king.

Must every ruler keep himself so separate from those around him, even those whom he should be able to trust? Or was there something in Æthelred’s very being that set him apart? It seemed to her that there was some fissure in this king’s soul from which suspicion rose like a malevolent cloud, working on him like a poison—and it was well-known that when a king waxed ill the entire realm suffered.

Like a cold fog, the stories she had heard about the death of Æthelred’s brother crept unbidden into her mind. A king had been murdered, and since that death England had been cursed with ill fortune. If Æthelred bore the blame, guilty or not, for the death of that king—and thus for the troubles that threatened the land—how many enemies he must have! And because she was bound to him body and soul, her fate wrapped within his, they were her enemies too, for all the years of her life.

She covered her face with her hands, and it seemed to her that the king’s own fear still blanketed the room, and that its essence settled upon her like a suffocating mist.

The final details for the queen’s removal to Exeter were all but completed. On the morning before her departure the ladies of Emma’s household sorted feverishly through her wardrobe, debating among themselves which items would be necessary for the journey. Emma, seated nearby at her worktable, was absorbed by a map that Father Martin had found for her, its surface smooth beneath her fingers. Far older than she was, it had been commissioned by King Alfred over a hundred years before to show the royal holdings in Wessex. With her index finger she traced a line from Winchester to Exeter, wondering at the distance that she must cover in the next few weeks. Her finger paused, though, when she spotted the royal manor of Corfe marked near the southern coast. Corfe—where Æthelred’s brother, King Edward, had met his death.

She stared at the crimson circle on the map. What had really happened there on the night that Edward was murdered? No one had been punished, no wergild paid for the death of that anointed king. And now, it was whispered, miracles had begun at Edward’s new tomb at Shaftesbury: a lame child had walked; a blind woman had been given back her sight. There were stories that the martyred Edward had appeared in dreams to some who had known him, warning that those who were guilty of his murder must make restitution to avert the doom that was about to fall upon England.

Winchester’s bishop had preached the day before of the need for all men to confess their sins and offer alms for the expiation of any crime, however small. She had watched the king as he had listened, stone-faced, to the voice that soared from the pulpit. He had never blinked an eye, never moved a muscle to indicate that his heart had been touched. Yet afterward he had bid her break her journey at Shaftesbury to offer prayers at Edward’s tomb. He had given her a bag of gold to bestow upon the abbey in the name of the king, and of his dead mother, Queen Ælfthryth.

It made Emma wonder again if the king had had some responsibility for the death of his brother. If the stories could be believed, it was Queen Ælfthryth who had planned Edward’s murder so that her own son could take the throne. But Æthelred would have been a child, only ten or eleven summers old. Surely he could not have taken part in that deadly pact.

Yet something, some unnameable terror, tormented the king. She could not forget his anguished cry as he stood in her chamber, transfixed by some foe that she could not see. She dared not ask him about it—not then nor any time since. Every night that he had come to her bed he had been more distracted, more silent and surly even than before. She did his bidding, and then he left her, but the memory of that strange and awful happening hung between them like a glittering dagger, its point aimed at her throat.

She longed to get away from Winchester, from the king and all his secrets, and from all the bitterness that lay between them. Tomorrow could not come soon enough.

When a servant entered to announce that Lord Athelstan wished an audience, joy soared through her. He had not accompanied the king from London, and she had despaired of seeing him before her departure.
Lead me not into temptation
, she prayed, schooling her face into a polite mask as she extended her hand toward him.

“Welcome, my lord,” she said.

He bent to kiss the heavy gold ring that marked her as the king’s possession, but his smile of greeting did not reach his eyes.

Immediately she was alert to something amiss. She gestured to a chair and glanced around the room. Elgiva, kneeling on the floor nearby as she packed gowns into a coffer, quickly turned away, as if to give the queen privacy. But Emma knew that Elgiva marked every conversation that took place in these rooms, and she suspected that Elgiva reported them to the king. Who else would take such a keen interest in everything that passed in the queen’s apartments?

She did not dare breach the etiquette of palace politics by sending her attendants away so that she could speak to Athelstan alone. Much as she longed to do it, it would arouse suspicion that she could ill afford. She dismissed Elgiva from her mind and focused all her attention upon Athelstan.

He had not taken a seat but was fingering the map that lay open on her table. Now he nodded toward it. The smile was gone.

“You cannot go to Exeter,” he said bluntly, as if he were giving her an order.

She looked at him, confused.

“Are you relaying a message from the king?” she asked.

“No. I am giving you the advice of a friend. You must give up this scheme, my lady. It is far too dangerous for you to even consider such a journey.”

She heard the passion beneath his words, read it in his eyes, but she could not comprehend it.

“I thank you for your concern, my lord,” she replied, “but surely there is little danger in such a journey as I intend. The king himself has assured me that—”

“I know what the king says,” he snapped. “I have just come from his presence. He is blind to the danger, or indifferent, I know not which. That is why you must take heed! My lady, the Danes will attack this summer. Swein Forkbeard seeks vengeance for the massacre of St. Brice’s Day, and every hour that passes makes it more likely that the next tide will carry dragon ships to our shores.”

A chill settled on Emma’s heart at the mention of St. Brice’s Day. News of Æthelred’s massacre of the Danes had spread to Europe, drawing protests even from the pope. Her brother Archbishop Robert had written a protest to the king, and in a letter to her had demanded to know why she had not used her influence with Æthelred to stop such a heinous act. Her mother had been more discreet. In a missive hidden in the slit leather cover of a psalter she had written:
What kind of Christian burns
innocent women and children?
Emma had been unable to defend the king, had not even tried to defend herself. She should have known about his plans, should have been a voice of reason, should have counseled him. But he wanted none of her counsel, and that was her failure, her own burden of shame to bear.

Like everyone else in England, she had expected the Danish king to wreak some kind of vengeance. They had all waited, as the spring brought fair sailing, for the hammer blow of reckoning. So far, it had not come. And because folk cannot live always in constant expectation of doom, they had put fear of Swein away from them, packed it up the way they would a winter cloak during summer’s dog days. The king insisted that with his stroke on St. Brice’s Day he had rid England of Swein’s supporters, and that the Danish king’s next move would take years to plan. Clearly, though, Athelstan believed otherwise.

“How can you know that Swein will come?” she asked. “Is there some augur that you have been given?”

“No, I have no proof!” He slapped the flat of his hand against the table in frustration. “I can feel it, though. It is like a thrumming underneath my skin. I know not how to explain it. I can only tell you that I know it. Swein will come.”

She looked up into his face and read the fear and urgency there. A prickling started at the back of her neck. She had been foolish to imagine that England could escape Swein’s vengeance. There was good reason why her brother feared to cross the fierce Danish king. Of course Swein would come.

“But even if I grant that you are right,” she protested, “it does not mean that Swein will attack Exeter. Surely the Exeter coast is the safest place to be. The town is well protected, and the countryside was attacked but two summers ago. There is little enough left to pillage from those wretched folk.”

“It is not just booty that Swein is after, do you not see? He has a score to settle with my father. And no, there is no possible way to know exactly where he will strike, but strike he will. Has your brother Richard sent you any word, anything that might be seen as a warning?”

She gazed at him in surprise.

“No, my lord. He has sent me no word. Only my mother has written to me, to tell me that my sister’s wedding to the Count of Blois will take place at midsummer.” She frowned, trying to remember all that her mother had written. “Some time after St. John’s Day both of my elder brothers will escort the couple back to the Duchy of Blois, which borders Normandy on the south.”

His gaze sharpened at this news. “So Duke Richard and the archbishop will be away from the Norman coast in the weeks after midsummer,” he mused. “If I were Swein, and if I wished to savage England’s southern coast, that is when I would strike.”

“But why strike the southern coast? Why not strike the eastern shires that face the Danish Sea?” She looked down at the map before her, and pointed to the empty space above Wessex that was marked East Anglia.

“The fens country, you mean?” Athelstan thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Swein is hungry for revenge. He will aim his blow at Wessex, my lady, for Wessex is Æthelred’s heart. He will strike our southern coast,” he said, bending over the map and running his finger over its lower edge. “Here, perhaps, near Pevensey.” His finger stabbed at a spot near the king’s manor at Beddingham. “Or here, at Exeter.” His finger moved to the fortress that marked her own journey’s end. “Swein will sail his ships down along the south coast of Denmark, along the coast of Frisia, and thence to Normandy. When the tides and winds are with him, he will launch his dragon ships across the Narrow Sea.” He raised his eyes to hers. “If your brothers are in the far south of their land, how are they to prevent Swein’s fleet from lurking in Normandy’s northern harbors?”

Emma pondered this, trying to recall exactly what her mother had written in her last letter. Had her news about Mathilde’s wedding, of Richard’s decision to visit Blois, been a hidden warning? A cold thought struck her of a sudden. Had her brothers’ plan to travel to Blois been deliberate, so that they could claim ignorance about what Swein might do? So that they could turn a blind eye to whatever use the raiders might make of Normandy’s harbors? Surely Richard’s purpose for accompanying the couple south was no more than to reinforce his support for an alliance he had long sought. Besides, Richard knew that she would be in Exeter. She had written to him that she would go to her dower lands there, knowing that he would approve of her determination to take responsibility for her properties.