Shadow on the Crown (3 page)

Chapter Two

December 25, 1001

Rochester, Kent

I
n England that December the fierce snowstorm blinded and buried countless travelers caught on the high chalk downs of Wessex, even within a few short steps of shelter. Near Durham in Northumbria the snow piled so high on the thatched roof of Lord Thorkeld’s great hall that it collapsed of its own weight, burying the lord and his family and retainers, twenty folk in all. On the Isle of Wight a storm surge swept an entire village into the sea. In Devon the once prosperous towns of Pin-hoo and Clyst, their houses, workshops, and storerooms razed to the ground during the previous summer’s Danish raids, were buried beneath fifteen feet of snow, as if they had never existed.

In the king’s hall at Rochester, Æthelred II of England and his councilors sat at table for the winter feast swathed in furs against the bitter cold. Their mood would have been dour even had the weather been more moderate. They drank their Christmas ale with grim determination rather than pleasure, their company unleavened by the presence of any women. The king’s mother, a force at court for nearly twenty-five years, had gone to God some five weeks before, in November, on the Feast of St. Hilda. The king’s lady wife, brought to childbed on Christmas Eve for the eleventh and final time, had breathed her last on Christmas morning. Her cold body lay beneath the vaulted wooden ceiling of the king’s chapel, mourned by her attendants. The child, born too soon and perhaps sensing his loss, found no comfort in the arms of his wet nurse. Whenever the roaring of the wind and the desultory muttering of men momentarily abated, his feeble cry wafted through the hall like the wail of a soul wandering between heaven and earth. The women tending the babe shook their heads, lips pursed. The child was not long for this world, they deemed, for he would not suck.

The men who kept company with the king at the high table gave little thought to the infant and his prospects, for Æthelred had sons a-plenty, several of them fully grown. What he lacked now was a wife, and they were determined to find him one, whether he would or no. They disagreed, however, on where to look for her.

King Æthelred, a man haunted by his past and troubled about his future, sat among them, his tall frame hunched over his silver plate and his right hand clenching a gilded drinking horn. Twenty-three years on the throne had seared creases into his face that were unusual for a man who had not yet seen forty winters. Telltale streaks of gray in his tawny hair testified to the hardship of rule, and the bent angle of his head beneath the thick, gold crown suggested that it was more burden than ornament.

The king, regarding his advisers with watery blue eyes, was well aware of the line of division among them with regard to his marital prospects. The men with lands in the north, led by Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria, would urge him to wed Ælfhelm’s daughter Elgiva—a beautiful witch of a girl as ambitious, he suspected, as her father. A marriage there would strengthen the bond between the king and the northern lords, whose allegiances to Ælfhelm and to each other were somewhat stronger, Æthelred knew, than their fealty to him.

The men with lands in the south would urge him to look beyond the Narrow Sea to Normandy for a bride. Wed the duke’s sister, they would tell him, and persuade her brother to side with Æthelred against the Danes who pillaged English towns and abbeys. Æthelred suspected that it might take a great deal of persuading. The Vikings paid Duke Richard well to harbor their ships on his coast and to trade their spoils in his great market in Rouen. If Æthelred should marry one of the duke’s sisters—and if he sealed the alliance with enough gold—Richard
might
be willing to bar the Danes from his ports, and so stop the Viking rape of English coasts.

Then again, Æthelred knew, he might not.

The hubbub in the hall, which had been muffled while the men filled their bellies, rose again as the meal came to a close and the drinking began in earnest. Æthelred motioned to his cupbearer to refill his drinking horn, then eased himself back in his chair and glowered at the men around him from hooded eyes, focusing at last on Ælfhelm of Northumbria. The ealdorman had risen from his bench and stood now in earnest consultation with a knot of nobles and clergy. His face was as craggy as a weathered scarp and just as difficult to read. Æthelred had never been able to decipher the subtle workings of the mind behind that stonelike visage, but he would wager half of Wessex that tonight Ælfhelm was garnering support for his daughter’s marriage to the crown.

And he would find it, certainly. It was customary for England’s king to choose his bride from one of the noble families of the realm. Æthelred’s wife and his mother both had been daughters of northern lords. Their fathers, though, would have been more pliable than Lord Ælfhelm. It seemed to the king that Ælfhelm was not mortal, but carved from granite and stone. Æthelred neither liked nor trusted the man, although he was careful to hide this. And while the king understood that it was wise to bind his enemies close, it seemed to him that the marriage bed might be too close for comfort. Ælfhelm had sons as well as a daughter, sons who, like their father, hungered for the power that came with a royal marriage. That power, combined with the family’s wealth and northern allegiances, could be more trouble than any girl was worth.

As for the girl herself, the last time the king had seen Elgiva she had been all of thirteen summers old. She had looked far older though, her body full and womanly, her mouth as red and voluptuous as ripe fruit. She was a woman born for bedding, and had she been older he might have forgotten himself and obliged her. But her youth had stopped him. That and her obvious awareness of the power she had over men, which had chilled his ardor somewhat. Now, at sixteen, wealthy and beautiful, with powerful kin and with family lands that rivaled his own, if he did not marry her himself he should have to watch her carefully. Whatever man she did marry must have no pretensions to the throne, or Æthelred might find his very crown at risk.

The king took another long pull at his cup. As for the unmarried sisters of Richard of Normandy, there were two of them, and that was all he knew about them. He knew something of Richard, though—a pretentious upstart sprung from Danish raiders who had decimated the northern territories of the Frankish kingdom, and then settled there to breed horses and brats. Richard’s pedigree was nothing like Æthelred’s noble ancestry, and although Richard himself was a Christian and styled himself “duke,” he was little more than a Danish pirate. In his youth he had even gone a-viking, raiding the Irish coast for gold and slaves, and he had ever welcomed the dragon ships to his harbors. Even now, rumor had it, there were Danish longships, their holds filled with English plunder, sheltering along Normandy’s coast. So to wed one of Richard’s sisters and plant a babe in her belly might be wise. It might give the Norman duke a more personal interest in the security of England’s shores.

Æthelred frowned. To take a Norman bride would offend his northern lords and bind them more strongly to each other—and against him. To wed Ælfhelm’s daughter instead of the Norman girl would be to throw away perhaps his only opportunity to quell the Viking threat to his kingdom. There was peril whichever way he turned, north or south. Taking any wife at all would be a devil’s bargain, and if it were up to him, he would not do it. He was the king. He wanted no woman in his hall.

He drank again, deeply, from the gold-rimmed horn, but the sweet mead that should have sent fire racing through his blood did not warm him. Instead, a chill, cold as the mouth of a grave, snaked along his arms and grazed an icy finger up his spine. A heaviness oppressed him, an inescapable black dread, and he whispered a curse against the sending that he knew was come upon him and that he could not escape. His vision blurred to haze, the sounds of feasting stilled, and from every dark corner, shadows streamed toward him until they reached the dais and formed a pulsing darkness before him. From its murky heart, his dead brother’s face, eyes glowing and malignant, stared into his.

He tried to pray, to curse, but he could make no sound except the formless, silent howl that was the voice of nightmare. The drinking horn slipped from his hand, yet he did not hear it fall. He heard only a low keening, like the sound of the wind hurtling against white cliffs above a pounding sea. It grew until it filled his brain, and again he tried to cry out, clutching his head in his hands as other hands grasped him, and the black phantom before him rippled and then faded at last.

Alarmed voices rang in his ears, and someone held a cup to his mouth, urging him to drink, but he dashed the cup away and shook off the hands that would tend him. Desperate to distract them, he called for music and was rewarded by the strum of the harp and the chanting of his
scop
.

His men scattered back to their places, but as Æthelred cast a furtive glance around the room, the eyes that met his were guarded and troubled. What did they think they had seen? A king besotted and drowned in his cups? A man overcome with grief at the death of his wife?

Better that than a king haunted by his brother’s ghost.

Three times now the thing that had been his brother had appeared thus before him, staring with glistening eyes. He had seen it first a month ago, hovering like some monstrous bird above his mother as she lay dying. Three days later, when he followed the dowager queen’s body to its resting place at Wherwell Abbey, he had glimpsed Edward’s face glaring at him, a darker shade among the chapel shadows. And tonight it had come again to torment him. Was it to be his
wyrd
, his fate, to be visited forever by his dead brother now that he alone remained alive of those who had seen Edward die?

What was it that drew the dead forth to walk among the living? And what would it take to send the thing back into its grave?

His thoughts flew to his dead wife, Ælfgifu, lying cold and still upon her bier. Tomorrow he would take her body by ship to its resting place at Minster Abbey. Would the specter of his brother be waiting there for him, as it had waited at Wherwell? He shuddered at the thought of it. Tonight he would pray for redemption, beseech forgiveness and mercy from God for the death of his brother. He would even plead for the repose of his mother’s soul, although he had no doubt that she was tasting the torments of hell.

Chapter Three

December 25, 1001

Aldeborne Manor, Northamptonshire

E
lgiva of Northampton—great-granddaughter of Wulfsige the Black, granddaughter of the Lady Wulfrun of Tamworth, and only daughter of Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria—stood at her chamber window and saw with satisfaction that a heavy snow was once more piling up against her father’s manor walls. The massive drifts would keep the men indoors for several days, and that suited her purpose exactly.

She sat down upon a stool and gestured to a servant to latch the wooden shutter against the cold. Pulling her thick woolen shawl closer about her, she tried to control her impatience as her old nurse stood behind her and used deft fingers to tame her mass of dark curls. She must look her best at tonight’s Yule feast. There were royal visitors awaiting her in the hall, and if events played out as she intended, she would soon be sharing her bed with the eldest son of the king. After that it would be a simple enough matter for her father to negotiate whatever details were necessary to arrange a royal marriage.

She picked up a silver mirror and contemplated the perfect arch of her dark brows, then angled the disk to reflect Groa’s aged face beneath her gray linen headrail. That face was as familiar to Elgiva as her own, yet there were secrets behind the shadowy gray eyes that she had never been able to fathom.

“Tell me again,” she said, “about the prophecy.”

Groa’s normally brooding expression lit up with a rare, knowing smile.

“You are destined for queenship, my lady,” she said. “Your children will be kings. You have but to reach out your hand and grasp what you desire.”

Elgiva pursed her lips, studying their fullness in the mirror.

“I intend to,” she said. “I intend to make Athelstan desire me tonight.” She wanted him to hunger for her body in exactly the way the priests railed against in their sermons.

“How can he not?” Groa asked. “You are as beautiful as you are wealthy. Even the king desired you, and you were but a child then.”

Elgiva smiled, relishing the memory of her meeting with the king at Yuletide three years before. She had bribed a servant to help her escape from an evening of prayer in Lady Ælfgifu’s chamber, and in the dark passage outside she had unwittingly stumbled into the king. Æthelred had saved her from a fall by pulling her hard up against him, holding her there for far longer than necessary while he inquired if she was hurt. She had answered him with her most beguiling smile, had eagerly pressed her body against his as he held her close. Then, with a skill she could not help but admire, he had slipped a hand through the neckline of her cyrtel to fondle her breast. She had let him do it, of course, because he was the king, and because she had been too astonished to protest. Besides, she had liked it. Who would have guessed that a man so old could have such eloquent, liquid hands?

She had dared to hope that he would lead her to his chamber, but it was at that interesting moment that one of his attendants had come to drag him to some meeting or other, and so her brief little tryst with Æthelred had ended.

Angling the mirror a little lower she studied her full breasts and the necklace of thick gold that had been a gift from her brother Wulf. It had been Wulf who had told her father about her little interlude with the king. Her father, who had ever been one to strike first and ask questions later, had cuffed her so hard that her mouth and nose had bled. He would have hit her again had Groa not come between them, fingering the pagan amulet she wore at her throat and threatening him with a curse. That had stayed her father’s hand, for he was wary of Groa and her curses and potions. Still, her father had hurled filthy words at Elgiva, calling her a cunt and a whore, and he had sent her from court that very day. She still hated him for that, but she had learned a lesson. She was very careful now about what secrets she confided to her favorite brother.

“I am glad,” she said, “that I did not give my maidenhead to the king. It would have been a waste.”

“As he already has a wife,” Groa replied, her face in the mirror gone all grim again, “it would have done you little good, to be sure.”

Well, it might have gotten her more lands and more money if she had become the king’s leman, but she was already one of the wealthiest women in the realm, and one of the few who owned her estates outright. Still, it would not have made her queen, and that was what she truly wanted. Groa had said she would be the mother of kings, after all, so it must mean that she was meant to wed Athelstan, who would surely take the throne when his father died.

And for the next two weeks, Athelstan and two of his brothers would be under this roof for the Yule feast. It was perfect.

Even better, her father was not here, although he had nearly ruined everything by insisting that she go south with him to attend the king’s Yule. He would have had her spend Christmas Day on her knees mouthing prayers with the king’s wife and her ladies. She had gulled him out of that, though, and she smiled to herself as she remembered how her father’s brow had darkened when she casually said that she hoped to become much better acquainted with the king during her time at court. He had raised a threatening hand, and she had feared that he might strike her, but Groa had whisked her out of the chamber, scolding like mad, and that had saved her. After that nothing more had been said about taking her south, and with her father and elder brother now gone, she could do as she pleased. Wulf certainly would not stop her.

“I think that Lord Athelstan has a look of the king about him,” she observed. They had the same golden hair and square, pleasing face.

Groa snorted. “When I saw him in the yard this morning he had the look of a man who spends more time grooming his horse than he does himself.”

“I did not ask for your opinion,” Elgiva snapped. “And you are not being fair. Any man looks unkempt when he has been riding.” Besides, there was an air about Athelstan, an unconscious swagger that she found infinitely appealing. At sixteen years old he was the heir to the throne of all England, and no one knew it better than he did.

She had watched from the hall steps as he rode through the gate, and he had lifted his eyes to hers and snared her in an unsettling blue gaze. She had seen it then, that awareness of just exactly who and what he was. He had worn it like a mantle, and from that instant she had wanted to wrap herself in it.

One day Athelstan would be the most powerful man in the realm, and her destiny, she was certain, must be bound to his. For two weeks he would be her guest—time enough, surely, to make him desire her, and to convince him that he must have her for his wife.