Shadow on the Crown (43 page)

And, in that moment, the words of the wisewoman came back to him.

Whoso would hold the scepter of England must first hold the hand of England’s queen.

Athelstan stared at the mother, and at the child who clutched her finger.

A bitter road lies before the sons of Æthelred. All but one.

Was Edward, then, the son whose
wyrd
lay in sunshine and not in shadow?

No! He would not believe it. It was not possible that all six of Æthelred’s sons should step aside or die so that this child of Emma’s would become king.

Yet he could not rid his mind of the forboding words. He turned his back on his family, and on the feasting, and he left his father’s hall.

Emma saw Athelstan leave the dais, saw him stand alone for a time and watch her from the darkness, saw him turn and make his way to the door. She could not tell what it was that upset him, but when he strode from the hall she felt a tugging at her heart, as if she were a jetty and he a ship straining at its moorings to be free.

Yet they had never been truly bound to one another. They had committed a great sin, but what she had felt for him, still felt for him, could never be spoken of nor acted upon. Never again. Not because she was Æthelred’s queen, but because she was Edward’s mother. The vows that bound her to Æthelred were as nothing to the invisible bonds that tied her to this babe. He was her treasure—her present and her future, her beginning and her end.

All her happiness was wrapped up in this child in her arms. And now she had become like Æthelred, trusting no one, not for fear of her own life, but out of fear for the safety of this child who needed her love and protection for his very survival. She must keep him safe, must guard his future.

Emma thought of her own mother then, and of how she had believed her heartless and cruel for sending her youngest daughter to a tragic land and to the cold bed of a sinister king.
You must go because you have the strength to do it,
Gunnora had told her. And Emma had thought she could never forgive her mother for that.

Yet she realized now that Gunnora had done what any truly loving mother must do—she had given her child the opportunity to fulfill her best, her highest destiny.

That is what she would do now for her son. Whatever sacrifices must be made, whatever alliances must be struck, she would pursue them to one end. For she was Emma, queen of England, and she had given England a son who would be king.

Author’s Note

Some time around
A.D.
1040, Emma of Normandy commissioned a Flemish monk, probably a member of her household, to write a book about her life. An eleventh-century version of that remarkable manuscript,
Encomium Emmae Reginae
, still exists. The document, however, begins in medias res, in the year
A.D.
1017, when Emma must have been about thirty years old. Although the writer refers to Emma as a great queen, he makes no mention at all of her husband, King Æthelred II, or of the fifteen years of Emma’s marriage to him.

Granted, the encomiast had good reasons for this huge omission, which I will not go into here, but those missing years, shrouded as they are in the mists of time and veiled by Emma’s silence, became the focal point of my interest in this enigmatic English queen. This novel, the first in a trilogy about Emma of Normandy, is the result.

Because Emma’s birth date was never recorded, she could have been as young as twelve or as old as twenty in the spring of
A.D.
1002 when, as
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
relates, “Richard’s daughter came to this land.” What we can be certain of is that Emma’s marriage was arranged very quickly, unusually so, within months of the death of King Æthelred’s first wife. Although little else is known about Emma during the early years of her marriage to a king who has been described as mistrustful, violent, and haunted, much can be imagined, and I have done so.

The history of England between the years
A.D.
1002 and
A.D.
1005—the period covered in this novel—has been distilled from chronicles, wills, sermons, laws, charters, and other documents of the time. All of the ealdormen, the nobles, and the prelates who populate my book have been plucked from those records, but most especially from
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
. It is important to note, though, that all of the
Chronicle
entries that deal with Æthelred’s reign were written some years after those events took place, by chroniclers who had distinct points of view, and who seemed to look upon Æthelred with either disapproval or despair.

King Æthelred did in fact attain his throne because of the murder of his elder half brother, Edward, in
A.D.
978, and the common belief at the time seems to have been that Æthelred’s mother was behind the deed. There is a twelfth-century account of Æthelred weeping at his brother’s death, but there is no record of what he may or may not have known about the plot that led to it. This is one of those wonderful blank spaces in history that are so tantalizing to novelists. Certainly the cult of that martyred King Edward, fostered by Æthelred and involving the building of a shrine and the reburial of the saint’s body around
A.D.
1001, hints at, if not a guilty conscience, at least an attempt to solicit Edward the Martyr’s goodwill in a time of extreme turmoil and danger in England. It was in that light that the character of Æthelred, haunted and guilt-ridden, began to take shape for me.

Regarding Æthelred’s sons, royal charters provide their names and a rough idea of their birth dates. The likelihood that the eldest ætheling, Athelstan, was about the same age as Emma triggered irresistible romantic possibilities in my mind as I plotted my novel. Indeed, one rumor that echoes through the centuries is that there was little love between King Æthelred and his Norman bride, and the idea of a romance between a despised queen and her husband’s rebellious son was just too fraught with delicious conflict for me to ignore. Aside from their names on the charters, though, nothing else is known about Athelstan or his siblings in the years covered by this novel, so I have had my way with them.

The fourth character viewpoint in the novel belongs to Elgiva of Northampton. In historical documents she is Ælfgifu, but I have chosen to use the variation Elgiva (it rhymes with Godiva) to differentiate her from Æthelred’s first wife and one of his daughters, both named Ælfgifu. We know that Elgiva was Ælfhelm’s daughter, and that by
A.D.
1016 she had at least one child, but there is no indication of her age or her relationship to the major historical figures in England before that date. Nevertheless, because the names of the women who would have been part of Æthelred’s court do not appear in the annals, it is quite possible that Elgiva could have been one of them, especially since her father was the leading ealdorman for many years. I have also placed Elgiva in the king’s bed, for which, I confess, there is no evidence at all, except that King Æthelred had a somewhat notorious reputation where women were concerned, at least in later histories, as did his father before him.

Of Emma’s Norman retinue, sources indicate that a woman named Wymarc and a man named Hugh were among those who sailed with her from Normandy. Hugh was appointed Emma’s reeve in Exeter, and the
Chronicle
says that it was through Hugh’s perfidy that Exeter was demolished by the Danes in
A.D.
1003. The chronicler is mute as to how this came about, and so that part of my story is pure fiction. To my knowledge there is no tunnel under what was once the
burh
of Exeter, but there are underground passages beneath the High Street that date from the fourteenth century, and their existence gave me the idea for the dark escape route taken by Elgiva, Wulf, and Groa.

Which brings me to Swein Forkbeard and the Vikings. Could Forkbeard have seen Emma in Normandy before she departed for England in the spring of
A.D.
1002? It’s possible. Forkbeard’s exact whereabouts in those years are unknown. At the end of
A.D.
1001 he may have been on the Isle of Wight, where a marauding Danish army had settled to await a payoff from the English king. If the winds were favorable, it would be an easy voyage from Wight Isle to Fécamp, even in winter.

The St. Brice’s Day Massacre, which some historians believe led Swein Forkbeard to wreak vengeance on the English king, occurred on Friday, November 13, 1003. How many Danes were killed is unknown, but the massacre became legend, with gruesome details added (possibly invented) as the story was told and retold. Nevertheless, the horrific slaughter of the Danes who were trapped and burned in Oxford’s St. Frideswide’s Church did indeed occur, and this event was described in one of Æthelred’s charters as a “most just extermination,” which seems a pretty clear indication of how the king viewed the matter.

Emma’s kidnapping by Swein is fictional, but it was inspired by an actual event that took place in
A.D.
943. In that year the Danes attacked Tamworth and abducted the very wealthy Wulfrun—Elgiva’s grandmother—presumably for ransom. Indeed, because of this event Wulfrun is the only woman other than royals and abbesses who is mentioned by name in
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
.

Regarding place names: I have chosen to use the modern versions except in a very few instances, when the eleventh-century name was wonderfully descriptive or just too different from what the place is called today. Saltford, which is modern-day Salford, was in the eleventh century exactly what its name indicated—a ford on the road that led from the salt deposits at Droitwich to the southern shires. Middleton (middle town) is the Anglo-Saxon name for today’s Milton Abbas; Otter Mouth, where the River Otter flows into the English Channel, is modern-day Budleigh Salterton, and lucky for me, the word
otter
is pronounced the same way in Danish as it is in English, all the way back to the eleventh century. I chose to use the Scandinavian name Jorvik for the northern city of York because I wanted to set it apart a little from the southern Anglo-Saxon world that Emma would have known. The great stone dance where Athelstan and Groa meet with the seeress is based on the Rollright Stones near the border of Warwickshire and Oxfordshire.

The Queen Emma who commissioned the
Encomium Emmae Reginae
in the fourth decade of the eleventh century was at the height of her power—a power that the young woman who arrived in Canterbury in
A.D.
1002 to wed a troubled king could hardly have imagined. The tides of history, though, seldom ran smoothly for Emma of Normandy. The years of her marriage to Æthelred were beset by conflict—within the royal family, the court, and the realm. It must have taken a woman of strength, courage, and determination to thrive in that often brutal world, but thrive she did, and there is much more of her story yet to be told.

Acknowledgments

No manuscript makes the journey from idea to publication without assistance, and mine is no exception. My first thanks go to my husband, Lloyd, whose love and encouragement have helped me to realize so many of my dreams, including this one, and to our sons, Andrew and Alan, who kept me grounded in the modern world while I was so often lost in the past.

Thank you to my steadfast and brilliant agent, Stephanie Cabot, for believing in this book and for helping me angle the story in the direction it needed to go; to Stephanie’s assistant Anna Worrall and to everyone at the Gernert Company who helped guide the manuscript to publication; to my U.S. editor, Emily Murdock Baker, who has been such a pleasure to work with, and to her team at Viking and Penguin; to editor Louisa Joyner and her staff at HarperCollins UK; and to Keira Godfrey, all of whom have been so enthusiastic.

I am indebted to fellow writers Christine Mann and Deborah Griffin, who read the first draft, and whose questions and observations helped shape the characters and story; to Matt Brown, for his wonderful map of Æthelred’s England; to Linda Watanabe McFerrin, for her guidance about all aspects of writing and publishing; to the members of Left Coast Writers®, for their passion for the written word; and to Janice Baeuerlen, MD, for her unflagging interest and expert advice. Every novelist should have a psychiatrist for a next-door neighbor!

I am grateful to Professor Andy Orchard, renowned medieval scholar and engaging teacher, whose 2007 summer course at Downing College, Cambridge, illuminated some of the darker corners of the Anglo-Saxon world. Thanks, too, to the many academics who answered questions and offered encouragement over lunches at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo and whose extensive research and writings helped inform this book, especially Professor Gale Owen-Crocker and Professor Maren Clegg Hyer. Special thanks to Professor James Earl, whose translation of
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
entry for
A.D.
978 opens the book.

I am indebted to Lloyd Bracey for whisking me in October 2009 from modern-day London to the reenactment of the Battle of Hastings; to Maria Faul for answering all my questions about parchment; to Gillian Bagwell for sharing her knowledge of swordplay; to Sara Latta, Jean Langmuir, Margret Elson, Karen Carlson, Dorothy Mondello, and Ron Leavens for their willing ears and for cheering me on; to Joanne Lopez, Joan Harper, and Mary Wieland for decades of friendship, encouragement, and prayers; and to Jane Pitcock, whose memory will live always in my heart.

Of the many books that I consulted while researching the history behind this novel, several deserve special recognition. Pauline Stafford’s
Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England
was invaluable and was my primary resource;
Encomium Emmae Reginae
, edited by Alistair Campbell, introduction by Simon Keynes;
Anglo-Saxon England
by Frank Stenton; Æ
thelred II
by Ryan Lavelle; Æ
thelred the Unready
by Ann Williams; M. K. Lawson’s
Cnut;
David Hill’s
An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England;
and
The Death of Anglo-Saxon England
by N. J. Higham. Two recent biographies of Emma,
Queen Emma and the Vikings
by Harriet O’Brien and
Emma: The Twice-Crowned Queen
by Isabella Strachan, were sources of inspiration, and would make excellent reading for anyone wishing to learn more about the life of Emma of Normandy.