The Forever Queen (51 page)

Frustrated, because he knew she was right, Cnut hurled his tankard across the tent, sending it clattering against the ridge pole. A stir at the door, two anxious faces peering in, Godwine’s and the Danish guard.

“All is well.” Cnut snapped irritably, waving them away. “I stumbled, all is well.” He squatted beside the brazier, fingers locking and interlocking, the bones of his knuckles cracking.

Emma sat straight, dignified. “I do not wish to see England torn into any more shreds. I do not wish to lie awake at night wondering whether, on the morrow, I shall lose my crown. You want to become a King, and I want to retain my position as Queen. It seems, to my mind, we are in need of one another.”

Snapping his head up, Cnut stared at her. “I do not follow you?”

“England will not accept you unless the English are persuaded you were sent by God, and you must ensure peace and prosperity throughout this land. I have the power to destroy any promise of peace by sending Normandy against you. My brother is vassal to the French King; where my brother requires aid, it is the duty of France to grant it. Where France requires aid, it is the duty of the Holy Roman Emperor to grant it.” She smiled silkily. “And where he requires aid, it is the duty of the Pope to grant it.” The same old repeated lie. At least it sounded convincing.

Cnut was astounded. How had she done it? How had she managed so easily to reduce all his confidence into nothing but dust? Gods, but if this woman were at the head of an army…!

“Or,” she added slowly, persuasive, “I could ensure Normandy never has cause to set foot on English soil, that France and the Holy Roman Emperor never wage war on you and that the Pope, far from excommunicating you from God’s truth, shall welcome you as a beloved brother.”

She swallowed, her throat dry. If her spies had been wrong in this, and if her intuition played her false…

Cnut spread his hands, incredulous. “And how do you think you could manage all that?”

She answered simply with four words that totally and utterly stunned him.

“By becoming your wife.”

March 1017—Thorney Island

The palace at Thorney was full to bursting, and London, downriver, was no better, with every tavern, boarding-house, and spare bed taken. Even most of the common land, which was not flooded by the spring high tides, was dotted with tents and makeshift bothies. Everyone in the world, or so it seemed, had made their way to London for Cnut’s coronation, everyone from Earl to pick-purse thief.

Erik of Hlaðir had been well pleased with the reward of Northumbria as an earldom; he had arrived only yesterday. He paused before the door to Cnut’s chamber and rubbed his hands together nervously. Cnut should be awake now; a servant had emerged five minutes ago with the night pot. He gathered his courage, knocked quickly, and marched in.

Cnut was sitting sprawled in bed, finishing the remains of a break-fast meal. “Erik!” he called enthusiastically, waving at the man to come in. “Well come, my friend! How are all my nobles this fine morning? Still grumbling that their lodgings have more fleas than a mangy street dog?” Brushing spilt crumbs from his beard, Cnut pointed to a side table. “Fetch a tankard; there is plenty of ale here to be finished. I do not know what they complain about; I am no better off. I mean, look at this place.” He gestured at the room. “Call this a King’s chamber? The walls are damp; the smoke hole is blocked; you cannot see the embroidery on those wall hangings for the grime that covers them. I have no wonder Lady Emma finds Thorney undesirable. I shall rebuild it, I think.”

“She is more comfortable in her lodgings in the city, I understand?” Erik asked, declining the ale and seating himself on the bench beside the table.

“More appropriate. Until that wretched brother of hers deigns to reply to my messengers seeking his permission to wed her, we must observe formalities, or so Archbishop Wulfstan regularly reminds me.”

“There is no news from Normandy, then?” he asked.

Cnut thumped an extra pillow in place behind his back. He had already decided this was to be a lazy day. Tomorrow he would be crowned King, and after that there would be no opportunity for lying abed, with or without a female companion. “Nothing.” He leant forward eagerly. “I could not believe my luck, Erik, when Emma came right out with her proposition—and there I had been, the previous few weeks, trying to think of a way to wed her without her ripping my balls off with her bare hands!”

“Some would find that most pleasurable!”

They laughed together, friends and kindred, but soon sobering, Cnut added, “Whether I can convince Duke Richard to accept my proposal is another matter.”

“He may decide it would be more worth his while to put Edward on the throne and rule as regent.”

Cnut shook his head. “ Richard likes to keep his treasure chests full. He will not pay for a war. Aside, my proposal of marriage to his sister included a financial offer he will find difficult to turn down.”

“And Edward and Alfred? What is to become of them?”

“If Emma gives me a son—and I remind you I already have two—there will be no need to bother with them. Why swat a fly that is not buzzing about your head?” Cnut lay back, brought his arms up behind his head. “It all seems so simple, Erik. What gaping hole have I missed that I am about to fall unwittingly into?”

Erik fell silent, suddenly interested in a broken fingernail. He had unwelcome news to impart.

“What is wrong? I could read the wrath of doom on your face the moment you came through the door. Tomorrow is my coronation; I was looking forward to it, but that frown tells me my expectations may not be rewarded. Has Saint Paul’s burnt down during the night? Has the good Archbishop of Canterbury received some dreadful blow to the head and cannot remember the order of service?” Cnut chuckled. “I promise you, whatever is the black news you come so early in the day to tell me, I shall receive it in good humour.”

“I doubt it.”

“Try me.”

Erik took a breath and spoke very fast, as if saying it quicker would make it sound not so bad. “Your wife has come from Northampton—Ælfgifu, with those two sons you just now spoke of. Their ship moored half an hour ago.”

Silence. A long, uneasy silence.

“I did not invite her.”

“No, my Lord.”

Heedless of his nakedness Cnut shot from the bed. “What fool allowed her out of Northampton? Who gave permission for her to take ship?”

“I believe she came with Thegn Thurbrand’s fleet.”

Cnut snatched a bed fur and draped it about himself. “Thurbrand? I might have guessed.”

Ælfgifu had been growing closer to that man these last few years. How close? If anyone had been sharing her bed, it would be he. The man had too much ambition for his own good and was not particular about how he achieved it. Neither was she.

“Where is she?”

“King’s hall.”

“Shit.” Repeated, with feeling, “Shit, shite, shit!” Cnut began to pace the chamber, pausing every few strides as if he were about to say something but, changing his mind, strode on. Jerked to a halt in front of Erik. “What do I do?”

Spreading his hands, Erik shook his head. He had no idea.

Cnut poured himself ale, drank half the tankard straight down, wiped the residue from his lips. “One answer from two choices, Erik. She must be silenced and distanced. For that, I either kill her or”—he ran his hands through his hair, the fur he was clutching to his body slipping to the floor—“or woo her.”

With his hand, Erik indicated if he might help himself to ale. “I do not advocate killing her. I govern the North for you, but it is a difficult governing. If you do away with Ælfgifu, even through an arranged accident, her kindred could rise against you. They are a close-woven lot and are as untrustworthy as a wounded boar.”

Ambling to the bed, Cnut sat. His father had instigated this marriage precisely for the allegiance of the woman’s kindred. Break it, and he could well be a dead man. He scratched at his scrotum. “You know, Erik, I am beginning to see the point of a monk’s celibacy. It leads for a quieter life in several directions.”

She came through the door with a rustle of a fine silk gown, covered by a sable-lined mantle. Her jewels, and there were many of them, sparkling where the early morning beams of sunlight filtering through the small windows caught them. She had both boys with her, Swegen and Harold.

“Earl Erik,” she said, sweeping into the room, “is an imbecile. It is nonsense that you would not be eager to greet your sons, even if you are still abed. Go to Papa,” she ordered, pushing the two reluctant children forward.

Cnut leant from the bed and lifted them both to sit either side of him. They were silent, wide-eyed lads, frightened by this man they had rarely seen. “They are good, fine boys,” he lied, hiding his disappointment at their sullen shyness. “Why have you come, Ælfgifu? You must have received my letter.”

Ælfgifu removed her cloak, dropping it to the bed as she approached, her hand smoothing over the fur. “Of course I received it. Do you sleep here alone, or do you share with some cow-teated doxy?”

“lf you received it, why are you here?”

The two boys, nervous because of this big man, wriggled towards their mother, their hands clutching at her gown. She smacked the fingers aside. “Do not touch, children; you will mark the fabric.”

The younger boy, Harold, began to grizzle, his tears setting the elder one to whimpering.

“See what you have done by neglecting them?” Ælfgifu complained unfairly. “Have you no feeling for your own sons?” She strode to the door, flung it open, and irritably waved in the nursemaid waiting outside. “Take the boys away; feed them or something.”

Alone with Cnut she slammed the door shut and swung herself around to face him, her fists bunched in fury. “Swegen turned three years old a month past. Could you not bother to send your eldest child a birthing day gift?”

She was as slender as the day he had wed and bedded her. The gown she wore was expertly sewn, cut to show the curve of her hips, the roundness of her breasts. A Saxon, Ælfgifu wore only a loose veil, not the covering restriction of a wimple that hid her hair, its rose colour complementing the pale hair that tumbled unbound over her shoulders and down her back. Cnut knew it would smell of sweet-scented herbs were he to press his face into it.

He answered her with sarcasm. “In case it has escaped your notice, I have been somewhat busy.”

Dramatically pointing at the bed, Ælfgifu shouted, “Busy fornicating with that strumpet who calls herself a Queen, I suppose?”

It took a great deal of effort for Cnut to keep his temper in control, but he knew by experience that to enter into a shouting match with Ælfgifu was to instantly lose. She could outbellow a wharfside fishwife.

“I apologise for neglecting the boy’s birthing day,” he conceded. “I shall see to it he receives a grant of land—Harold, too, for his day when it comes.”

“I will not be set aside, Cnut. No amount of polite letters telling me my marriage is void and ended will alter that. I will not quietly fade into the background while you take her to your bed and leave me without my rightful crown.”

Preoccupied with brushing crumbs from the bed, Cnut did not answer immediately. “And just how do you work out that the Queen’s crown should become yours, Ælfgifu?” he finally said. “There is no legal, church-blessed marriage between us, nor will there ever be. What we did have, I have annulled. Tomorrow, I am to be crowned as King, and sometime soon I will be exchanging marriage vows with Emma of Normandy. She comes with the package of kingship. She is already the anointed Queen; the crown remains hers.”

“And I come with the sharing of your bed, the birthing of your sons, and the loyalty of my kindred. You will not set us aside, for if you do, you will face rebellion.”

Cnut smiled at Ælfgifu, but there was nothing of liking in the expression. This one was a bitter, scheming bitch. Oh, Emma was as scheming and could probably be as much the bitch if need arose, but there any resemblance between the two women ended. Ælfgifu thought in black and white patterns of revenge for wrongs committed against her; Emma thought in a careful and considered blend of colour to obtain, by skill, what she wanted. He wished now that he had sought Emma’s advice on what to do about Ælfgifu, although he could guess her answer: do well away with her. Ælfgifu would never be harnessed, but—and he knew he would regret this—he could not bring himself to have her killed. Could she be bought or bribed?

Cnut pushed aside the bed coverings, revealing his naked body. He patted the linen sheet. “Come here,” he said.

“You cannot do without me,” Ælfgifu whispered as, within a few moments, she slid in, naked, next to him. “Both you and I know it.”

She was wrong, but this was not the place to contest the issue. If she wished to believe a lie, Cnut was not prepared to disillusion her.

After, when they lay breathing hard, sweat streaking their entwined bodies, she said, “There are two things I want from you, Cnut. Promise them, and I will leave you in peace.”

He had been drowsing. He answered cautiously. “I make no promises until I know what I must avow to.”

“Promise not to set me aside; whenever you ride north, come to my bed, even if it only be once in a year.”

Keep her as his mistress? Emma would not like it, but maybe Emma would have to put up with it. He grunted. Neither a yea or nay.

Ælfgifu smoothed the hair on his chest, her palm sensuous, sliding to his stomach, lower.

“And the second?” he asked, feeling his arousal at her touch.

“Eadric Streona’s head.”

Cnut rolled her over and entered her quickly, making her gasp as he took his pleasure of a second coupling. As he spilt his seed into her, he said, “That I can definitely promise you.”

April 1017—Falaise, Normandy

If Edward knew Alfred had been weeping, he would never allow his brother to forget it. Therefore, Alfred ensured he was quite alone before allowing the release of grief.

His uncle had been discussing his mother for months, but adult talk was so confusing, and most of it heard in snatches, for whenever they realised the boy was listening they would stop, or change the subject. Not today. Uncle Richard’s son, the eldest one, almost an adult himself and also called Richard, had come out with it, straight and plain.