Shadow on the Crown (30 page)

Chapter Twenty-seven

Devonshire

E
mma kept her eyes on the lane where it left the hamlet and bisected the meadow to disappear among the trees. She raced flat out, the wind tearing against her face. Sheep scattered away from her, bleating in alarm. She sensed that Swein was falling behind, and she felt a surge of elation. She whispered a prayer to the Virgin and shouted encouragement to her horse.

The hamlet lay on her left now, and she kept her mount in a diagonal line that would bring her to the lane at a point beyond the last house of the village. Just a little farther and she would have won her freedom. But as she neared her goal she saw another horse and rider fly out of the village, bolting along the lane to head her off. Swein’s son. Unlike his father, he sat his horse well, and his lithe figure seemed to be one with his mount.

She did not slow down but veered to her right, away from the dirt track and heading instead straight across the meadow for the woods. If she could stay in front of him, she might still escape, for she had the faster horse. The trees loomed directly in front of her, and as she slowed her mount to enter the woods, she saw the boy urge his horse off of the track to follow her.

Then she was in the trees, keeping her head low to avoid whipping branches that might blind or kill her. She trusted to Ange to stay ahead of her pursuer, but the horse came to a shuddering halt at a cliff edge, and Emma cried aloud in frustration. A river swirled far below her in a deep channel. She took no time to gauge the distance, but slid from the saddle. Grabbing the bridle, she led Ange toward the steep ledge, but suddenly the boy was there beside her, and long, thin fingers clasped her wrist.

Using all her strength she wrenched her hand away and turned to face him, brandishing the knife.

“You will let me go!”

He halted, more in surprise at her use of Danish, she guessed, than in fear of the blade in her hand.

Perhaps he sensed that she had neither the will nor the instinct she needed to make a lethal strike. Perhaps he was simply reckless. She only knew that for an instant they stared at each other, frozen in time like figures carved into stone. Then, as she turned to fling herself down the ledge, he clutched her blade arm and dragged her backward, so that she lost her balance and fell against him. Regaining her footing, she twisted and kicked, trying vainly to escape his cruel grasp. Slowly, and with a careless strength that maddened her, he pried her fingers from the hilt of the knife and tossed it away.

Still she resisted him, more frantic than ever, but he dragged her from the cliff edge, and as she continued to struggle he finally grasped both her arms and shook her until her teeth rattled.

“No more!” he shouted at her.

He shook her again, and she had to stop struggling then, for she was dizzy and weak from frustration and rage. She looked into his face, into dark eyes that regarded her not with the contempt that she expected but with compassion.

“You have lost the battle, lady,” he said. “You cannot escape. It was a brave attempt, but it is done.”

Any thoughts she may have had about making another attempt vanished with the arrival of Swein and Halfdan. Swein dismounted quickly and strode toward her, his face hard. She knew instinctively that he would cuff her, and she had no wish to feel the brunt of his anger again.

As he raised his hand to deliver the blow she cursed him in Danish and followed it with a threat.

“If you strike me,” she said, “when next I lay my hand on a knife I shall slit your throat.”

Swein checked his swing, gazed at her in amazement, then lowered his hand and grinned at his son.

“By all the gods! Spoken like a wench from the stews of Hedeby.” His grin faded when he turned back to Emma. “The more fool I for forgetting your lineage, my lady. I shall gladly stay my hand, and I shall make certain, as well, that nothing sharper than your tongue comes within your reach. May I,” he asked with a mock bow, “assist you to your horse?”

She did not want him to touch her, but having avoided a slap, she decided not to press the point. She spoke softly to Ange as the mare stood trembling with the exertion of their pointless bid for freedom. Their journey continued just as before, except that Emma gave way to bleak despair.

They crossed the River Otter at a ford above another deserted village, then followed a track that led them along the river’s eastern bank. The land rose slowly until they were riding atop a ridge. Emma looked southward, and she could see that the ridge curved around to the west like a crooked finger. Below her the tidal estuary of the River Otter glimmered like the shards of a mirror in the last of the dying light, but her senses registered nothing of its beauty. She was numb to everything now except the realization that her life as she had come to know it was over.

They had reached the sea. She could hear the lash of waves upon the beach and smell the salt in the air. Somewhere nearby, she knew, there would be salt pans and tiny huts where the seawater was boiled to extract the precious grains. There were numerous tuns of that salt, even now, sitting in the storehouse below Exeter fortress. Or perhaps, she reflected, they had already been carried to Forkbeard’s waiting ships. In any case, the saltworkers would have fled to shelter at the first sign of the warning beacons. There would be no one on the beach now to come to the aid of a beleaguered queen.

The evening sky was clear, although a bank of clouds lay threatening just off the coast. A moon nearing the full shimmered overhead, and it was late, she knew. She had come to day’s end, land’s end, and, for the moment, journey’s end. She was hardly grateful. Indeed, she wished that she could simply continue to ride until she and Ange both dropped, exhausted and senseless. Instead she would be forced now to dismount and wait for whatever her captors had planned for her.

As they drew within sight of the sea she searched the waters for sign of a ship, but she could make out nothing. Perhaps the Virgin had answered her prayers, and the ship was not there.

The guard had already dismounted and now he approached a tall, mounded shape that proved to be a tarp-covered pile of wood and kindling, ready for lighting. Using a flint and steel, he soon coaxed a spark, and then flames bloomed into the night.

“Take the lady down to the beach,” Swein said to his son. “If she stays near the horses, she might take it into her head to run again.”

The boy led her down a steep, narrow track that led to the shore. She took one quick glance back, to where the guard was stripping the horses of all their gear. That would go with them in their ship. Silver bridle rings and tooled leather would fetch a handsome price at the market in Rouen. No doubt Swein was sorry that he could not take her mare with him as well. Ange tossed her head and nickered to Emma, and then the boy tugged at her hand and forced her farther down the path, and she had to look to her footing.

On the beach she huddled in a fold of the cliff to escape the sharp wind that swept across the land toward the sea. Still, she was cold, weary, and heartsore. She gazed sullenly toward the dark waves, and after a time a single pinpoint of light appeared. The dim hope she had held onto—that the ship would not arrive to meet them—flickered and died.

Athelstan, leading his men along the western shore of the River Otter, saw a signal fire blaze into life on the promontory across the river. Soon after, he saw an answering light at sea that rose and fell with the surge of the waves. There was a dragon ship out there, drawing slowly toward the shore.

They had come to the right place, then. Somewhere on the other side of the muddy estuary Emma was Swein’s captive. He would not give her up without a battle.

He halted his men. “Remember, Forkbeard is worth more to us alive than dead,” he told them. “We want him and we want the queen, both alive and uninjured. There are at least two men with Swein, maybe more. If we hope to get out of here with our own skins intact, we had better be quick, because if we are still on the beach when that ship reaches shore, we are dead men. Is everyone clear? I want Swein alive,” he repeated.

The three men grunted grudging assent. They had ridden for many miles with the stench of Exeter’s burning in their nostrils, and Athelstan knew that his order to spare the Danish king galled them. But Swein was a great prize. He could be bartered to purchase peace for England for decades to come. That was assuming, of course, that they could win the skirmish ahead.

He grasped his shield, drew his sword, and urged his horse forward, slantwise across the mudflats. Ahead of him he could see the broad shore of the Narrow Sea, where moonlight glinted on smooth, round stones. They reached the shingle, and the noise of their horses’ hoofbeats must have alerted the Danes, for as Athelstan drew closer he saw two men on the beach ahead, facing him with swords drawn. Two other figures lurched away along the shoreline, their progress slow and fitful because one of them, surely Emma, seemed very disinclined to go.

Good girl, he thought. Fight him every step of the way.

He spared a glance seaward and saw the ship’s signal light rising and falling as the vessel’s oars strained against the outgoing tide. Thirty Danes would be over the side and making for the beach as soon as the ship found shallow water, but with the tide and the wind against them they were making slow headway. There was time yet.

He focused on the two armed men who stood separated by several feet now, their cloaks tossed aside and their feet set wide apart, ready for battle. The man closest to the water was white-bearded, tall, and fiercely sturdy. Forkbeard. The other warrior, younger and brawnier, suddenly ran toward them with a roar, as if to intercept the riders before they could reach his companion. He raised his sword in both hands, and as one of Athelstan’s men surged forward to meet him, the Dane struck a blow aimed not at the rider, but at the horse. The animal screamed in agony as it crashed to the shingle, pinning its rider beneath it.

Athelstan skirted the downed man and horse and paid them no further heed, for all his senses were focused on Swein Forkbeard. He had dreamed of facing the man a hundred times, had thought of little else for months. All his desire was to outwit, outthink, outmaneuver this Danish pirate who called himself king. He might not have the skill to beat him in single combat, but if he could hold him at bay for a time, he and his men might be able to disarm him at last. He was probably a fool about to lose his life, but he had two weapons that Swein did not—his shield and his rage.

He saw the king’s sword flash in the moonlight, and he wheeled his horse to dodge the slashing, downward stroke. Before Swein could raise his sword again Athelstan leaped from his mount to land on his enemy, hammering his shield against the king’s sword arm. Swein grunted and staggered a step with the blow, but did not fall. Athelstan pushed himself away from his enemy, knees bent, sword and shield ready to meet the next thrust. He repelled it with his shield, following it with a stroke aimed to disarm rather than kill. Swein sidestepped it easily, and they traded more blows, so many that Athelstan’s arms grew weary as he parried and dodged, twisted and slashed, fending off a warrior skilled in arms whose mind was bent on slaughter.

Emma, desperate to escape Cnut’s brutal grip on her wrist, threw herself to the shingle and was surprised that the tactic worked. Freed for a moment, she scrambled to her feet and ran back toward where the men were battling on the beach. One rider had gone down, but two others were trading blows with the big Dane. The third man had his back to her, moving with an agile grace, and it seemed to her that he did not fight Swein so much as use his weapons to fend off Swein’s repeated sword strokes. She had barely managed to grasp all this when Cnut, with a curse, tackled her from behind, and she fell headlong. She clutched one of the smooth fist-sized stones beneath her, and when Cnut dragged her to her feet she smacked it against his ear and twisted out of his grasp again, stumbling toward the melee.

She had nearly made it to one of the horses when Cnut brought her down once more, so hard that she was knocked breathless. He landed on top of her, but he was up in a moment, pulling her arm sharply and causing her to cry out in pain.