The Forever Queen (55 page)

“Thank you, Eadric Sheepshanks,” Godwine breathed, thrusting himself to his feet, briefly taking the hand offered to help him up. “I will not forget you saved my life.”

Eadric grinned. He was a man of no especial status, although freeborn the eldest brother of eight, who held the tenancy of a small farm in a wooded vale of Wessex, a mile or so from the coast, Godwine being his manor Lord. By chance, he had been serving his fyrd tithe of arms, had been one of those selected to serve as crew to Godwine’s own craft, Seagull. He nodded his gratitude at Godwine’s recognition, reasoned that if his fortune held, he would receive a pouch of silver or bag of gold by way of reward.

Fortune was smiling that day on Eadric and Godwine and Cnut. Thirty of the i·víkìng ships were destroyed, and Harald was forced to bow to his younger brother in surrender and acknowledge his underestimation of Cnut’s capability. A bitter blow for the elder man, elation for the younger.

With pride swelling his chest almost to bursting, Cnut and his fleet escorted his humbled brother to the safety of harbour at Sandwich. As reward, the King offered Godwine a tribute beyond expectation. “At my next council,” Cnut declared, “when we meet at Oxford for the holy celebration of Easter, I shall bestow upon you an earldom. To you, Godwine, will go Wessex.”

In turn, for Eadric, called Sheepshanks for the width of his thighs, Godwine granted more than a pouch of coin; he bestowed the status of Thegn and, to go with it, the gold to purchase a better farm in a better, more fertile valley, one where Eadric’s mother had been born, at a place called Nazeing near the River Lea in Essex. A good place to farm, to take a wife, raise a family.

Halfdan received nothing, for he had no use of reward, save for the dignity of the Christian words of blessing spoken over him as he went to his grave within the salt embrace of the ebbing tide.

March 1018—Canterbury

Aware he was unwanted, disliked, and very much in the way, Harald was in no hurry to go home to Denmark. There was more than one way to kill a rat, and if he had been unable to defeat his younger brother at sea, well, maybe he could find another way to dislodge him?

“I am not certain about the wisdom of this proposed charter,” he said to Emma, stretching out his long legs and folding his arms behind his head. He sat in Cnut’s favourite chair, the one with the high back and embroidered, padded cushioning. Cnut would be annoyed if he knew, for he allowed no one to sit there, but he had been cloistered with the Archibishops Wulfstan and Ælfstan this past hour, discussing the wording of the charter Harald referred to.

Emma made no answer, pretending to be engrossed with a particularly difficult stitch on the embroidery she was working. She understood why Cnut had insisted his brother stay at court—as an honoured guest—but for the love of her sanity, she wished he could find an alternative way of keeping the wretched man under close observation!

The silence stretched into the discomfort of embarrassment. Emma finished the stitch, sat back to admire her handiwork; with deliberation she turned her head to stare with dislike at her brother-in-law. “And may I ask, why you are not certain?”

Harald lumbered to his feet and wandered around the room, making a show of closely inspecting the weaponry displayed on the walls. “I query the wisdom of granting so much land into the hands of the Church, that is all,” He tested an edge of a sword blade and found it sharp. He sucked the blood welling from his thumb. “The Church is getting enough, without Cnut giving more.” He half laughed. “I feel if my brother truly intends to give half his kingdom away, he could give it to me. After all, I could make more use of it than a fusty old Bishop.”

“It is my charter,” Emma said scathingly, her hand on the swell of her pregnancy. “It is at my request that Cnut gives this parcel of land to Christ Church, as a gift to God for my safe delivery when my time comes.”

Another short silence.

“Ah,” Harald replied. “Then I defer to your feminine wisdom.” He proffered her a bow, then, with quick steps, crossed the room, took her hand, and kissed it. “You are a handsome woman, Emma. I can see why my brother was so intent on securing you.”

Emma attempted to withdraw her fingers, but Harald held them firm.

“Ragnhild, his Norwegian wife, was a beauty. Has he told you about her? He was besotted with her.”

“How fortunate, then, that she is dead,” Emma answered, trying again to release her hand.

“My wife is a hag. She has hairs sprouting from her nose. Making love to her is like caressing a grim-breathed troll.” Harald moved closer, pressing himself against the bulge of Emma’s abdomen. “Cnut, I would expect, receives much pleasure in bed.”

Emma slapped his face. “I would advise you not to insult me again. I am not as restrained as my husband when it comes to dealing with my enemies.”

“What enemies would they be?” a voice asked from the doorway.

Harald spun around, his face blanching, to see Cnut entering. Composed, behaving as if nothing untoward had occurred, Emma smiled delightedly at her husband. “You have finished? How wonderful! May I read it?”

Cnut kissed her cheek, motioned for her to sit. “How often must I tell you not to stand on your feet so much? You must rest, elskede, I insist upon it.” He set a scroll of ragged parchment in her hand. “This is one of the drafts; the scribe is copying the final agreed version as we speak. What enemies?”

Eagerly, Emma sat and began to read, saying absently, “I am perfectly all right. And there are no enemies; I have none.” She scanned the first few lines, her lips moving silently, then she began to read aloud, “‘I, Cnut, King of the English at the request of my Queen, Ælfgifu’”—Emma detested the continuing use of her official name, but there was nothing she could do about it—“‘grant to the venerable Archbishop Ælfstan a certain grove of woodland commonly called Hazelgrove in the famous forest of Andredesweald.’” Her smile broadening, Emma looked up at Cnut’s benign expression. “Thank you, my Lord; I am delighted to be giving this gift.”

“Valuable land, is it?” Harald asked.

“Of course it is. Of what use would poor scrub be?” Cnut snapped.

“I only thought perhaps you ought not be giving away assets that may be needed,” Harald answered, making himself comfortable in one of the other chairs. “If there is no tithe collected by Easter, then you must find alternative payment for my men.” His eyes held Cnut’s, unblinking, plain in their meaning. “We will not wait longer than Easter.”

“Your men? We?” Stifling the inclination to call in the guard and have this irritating bastard executed here and now, Cnut poured himself ale, sat in his chair after thumping the cushions. “I was under the impression my fleet decimated your men, Harald. That I thrashed those who rebelled. Most of them have only God, and the fishes of the sea, to receive anything from. There will not be payment for those who survived; to live is sufficient.” Cnut’s voice rose as he neared the end of the sentence and, with it, his temper. He flung the ale aside and, lurching to his feet, bore down on Harald, his fingers curling into the folds of his brother’s tunic.

“London, brother, has sent its ten-thousand-pound tribute; it came yestereve. In full. I intend to keep forty ships for my own; those who wish to stay are welcome to join my English scyp fyrd. The rest of you will be paid at sunrise on the morrow and may leave in what ships remain on the noon tide.” The material tightened at Harald’s neck as Cnut’s fingers gripped harder, choking him. “You shall be with them, and if you ever so much as glance in England’s direction again or dare to insult my wife as I overheard, then you will regret the day our mother spewed you from her womb!” Cnut flung Harald from him, causing him to overbalance, fall to one knee.

With the false congeniality swept aside, Harald brushed off imaginary dirt from his sleeves and backed towards the door, his face puckered in livid hatred. “You shall regret this. I do not tolerate insults.”

Cnut stood his ground, defiant, fists on hips. “Neither do I, and it is you who shall do the regretting. You have a choice: you board one of those ships and be gone from my sight, or I shall find some form of appropriate accommodation for you here in England. Something that closely resembles six feet of soil.”

In reply, Harald made an obscene gesture and slammed from the room.

“Oh, I think you have offended him,” Emma stated with an approving smile.

8 April 1018—Oxford

Cnut’s political genius was so successful at the Easter gathering of court that the chroniclers in later years found little more to write of him beyond the recording of his virtues and generosity. The achievement at Oxford was partly due to Archbishop Wulfstan, who saw, with relieved delight, an end to the horrors and deprivations of the devil’s work. Ironically, because of Cnut’s coming, their suffering was over, God’s wrath was appeased, and all would be right with the Christian world,

There was more to this meeting of council than the religious rhetoric of Archbishop Wulfstan, though, for with the demanded tribute finally paid, the assembly at Oxford was to become the watershed of Cnut’s acceptance by the people of England. He was to offer more than his pledge to rule as a King should rule, reasserting his vow that the English would henceforth live in peace, as one nation of Anglo-Danes. Every man, from Earl to Thegn, pledged his honour to Cnut and eagerly took a binding oath, sworn in the name if God, to obey his King.

“Sir? My Lord King?” Leofgifu edged onto the dais, trying not to disrupt what she privately thought of as long-winded speech making. “Sir, it is my Lady Queen.”

His brows shooting downwards into a frown, Cnut swivelled in his chair. “The babe? It has come?”

Leofgifu hesitated; she had not wanted to be the messenger, but someone had to tell him. “It has come,” she said, “the babe is born.”

Cnut jumped up, waving Earl Thorkell, who was making an opulent and praising oration, to silence. “Well, woman? How is it? What is it? How does my lady wife?”

Taking a breath, Leofgifu blurted everything in one sentence. “The babe is well, as is my Lady, although she be tired. You have a daughter, a baby girl.” She almost flinched, expecting a bellow of disappointed rage, but it did not happen. Instead, Cnut laughed, punched the air with his fist.

“I have a daughter!” he shouted, “another daughter, praise be to God!” After twirling Leofgifu around, not an easy task given her ample girth, he jumped from the dais and, grasping mens’ hands as he passed, hurried to the doorway.

“Forgive me, this meeting is concluded. I have a daughter to greet, and you have several barrels of my finest barley ale to break open in celebration!” He was gone, whisking himself away to Emma’s chamber.

“You would have thought he would have preferred a son,” someone said, as men scraped back their stools, began to fasten cloaks or collect scrolls of parchment.

“He wanted a girl child,” someone else said. “Mark my words, if the Queen ever gives him a son, there will be all Hell let loose from the direction of Northampton.”

***

“What do we call her?” Cnut asked, his voice hushed as the babe lay asleep in his arms, her tiny fingers curled tight around one of his own.

“It is for you to choose, but I would call her Gunnhild, after the good friend I once had, your father’s half-sister.”

“Then Gunnhild it is.” Cnut looked down at the child’s sleeping face, a week old, already grown so much, yet still so vulnerably small. She was perfect, absolutely perfect.

Moving slowly, he sat on the edge of Emma’s bed, his wife shifting her legs to make room for him. Carefully he tucked the shawl under Gunnhild’s chin, rocked her as she stirred.

Watching him, the love that was pouring from him to his daughter as if it were a waterfall in full spate, Emma asked, “You have another daughter, Ragnhilda. Why do you never speak of her?”

Cnut wiped dribble from the babe’s lips with his finger. “She was a beautiful child, too.” He glanced, with a smile, at Emma. “Like her mother, as this little one is like you.”

“Ragnhild? I have heard that you loved her.”

Chewing his lip, Cnut looked back into the past, those stolen months of happiness in Norway. Then, when he had lost Ragnhild, he had thought happiness would never find him again. Was that why he had pushed himself to come to England? Why he had taken risks against Edmund? And he had taken them; he had the battle scars on his arms and legs to prove it. Edmund Ironside had not been the only one to keep secret the damage done by sword and spear. Except Cnut’s wounds had been minor compared with mortal injury, although some of them persistently ached when the wind moaned at night from far-distant lands away to the northeast.

“I thought I would die when I lost Ragnhild; some part of me, I think, did die.”

“Strange,” Emma said, touching her hand lightly, lovingly, on his arm. “A part of me died when I was wed to Æthelred. I only came alive when I married you.” She was not envious or jealous of Ragnhild. How could she be? The woman, unlike Ælfgifu of Northampton, was no threat. The living caused the mischief, not the dead.

“You know, of course, that Norway was lost to Denmark soon after Erik Håkonsson left to come to England with me?”

Aye, she knew that.

“We left Erik’s son and his brother, Ragnhild’s father, in charge of Norway. Capable men, the both of them, but a man called Olaf Haroldsson, an old enemy of my father’s, proved more capable. With Hlaðir fallen, they fled, taking my daughter with them, intent on joining me here in England.” Cnut paused, rocked the child. “But the winds of the North Sea can be treacherous, and the ships were blown and tossed about as if they were wooden toys bobbing in a spring-flood mountain stream. A few who had fled reached safety on the shores of the Isles of Orkney. Only a few, Erik’s son and brother were not among them.”

Cnut laid his lips lightly against Gunnhild’s forehead. The child, Ragnhilda, had survived. Somehow the child had been saved.

“She remains in Orkney, up in the High Islands, where I have friends and kindred to take care of her. I had hoped, one day, to send for her, but…”