The Forever Queen (59 page)

“But you know now.”

“Yes, I know now.”

Those two living sons were a threat to Cnut. Their father had been a lawful anointed King, a King who had died honourably from wounds received in battle defending his kingdom and his people. Those sons had every right to the title Ætheling, to claim their legitimacy as kingworthy. And once they were grown, they would be a threat to Cnut and to his son, her son, Harthacnut, who lay even now, sleeping in a bed alongside these two boys.

“I am tired of hiding,” Ealdgyth said, the weariness evident. “I can run no more. Not even for my sons.”

“Then would you give them up?” Emma said sharply. As she had given up hers? Ah, but then her giving had been different; by sending them into Normandy, she had saved Edward and Alfred from a certain death. Cnut could not have permitted them to live had they remained in England. And it had been no hardship for Emma to see them go; they were Æthelred’s sons, and she had been only too pleased to shed everything that reminded her of his loathsome touch. If she had to part with Harthacnut…ah, that she could not, would not do.

“Your sons are a danger to my son,” Emma said candidly, “but they are also a danger to other sons of Cnut. Sons who are older than the child I bore seven months past, sons who have the blood of a whore in their veins.” Emma stood, brushed sand from her gown, her decision made. Mayhap it was the wrong one, but how could the killing of yet more innocents be right?

“It grows late, and the ride here has tired me. I would seek my bed. And we have yet to climb all those steps to the top of this cliff.”

Emma held out her hand to Ealdgyth. “I would be friends with you, for there is no reason for us to be enemies, provided I have your word you will not send your sons against mine.” This was foolishness, and Emma knew it. Even if Ealdgyth agreed, the sons would go against it when they were grown. But every woman was entitled to be a fool once in her life.

Ealdgyth’s smile as she hesitantly took Emma’s hand in her own was infinitely sad. “I have no wish to see my sons dead, my Lady. I have seen enough of death for it to sicken me to the pit of my stomach. All I want is peace and somewhere safe to sleep at night, without the fear of dreams.”

The moon was rising, its great, smiling circle coming up out of the sea, turning the world silver beneath its benign gaze. Emma felt all she had to do was step onto the reflected path that shimmered across the shifting waves, and she would be able to touch it with her outstretched fingers. Soon, Cnut’s ships would be on that sea, with their colourful sails proud-filled, the spindrift curling at their prows.

“The moon is bright,” Emma said, “bright enough to light any road a woman might wish to take; a road where eyes cannot follow her or death stalk in her wake. Follow the moon, my dear,” she advised, “for she is one of us, a mother, with the cycle of the month around and who cares for, and loves, her children.”

Emma remained at Whitby Abbey for three days, and not once during her stay did she mention her first evening, her walk along the shore, or her meeting with a woman seated there on a rock, a tired woman, who had watched the oystercatchers rummaging for hidden prey. Emma stayed silent even when, much later, the rumours came that a ship had sailed from York with a sad-eyed woman and her two small sons, heading across the North Sea to a distant land beyond the reach of Denmark, no matter how long an arm Cnut might have, to where they spoke in a different tongue and followed different ways.

If ever Emma heard that this woman had found a new life for her sons in a place called Prague, and that one day the boy called Ædward would find a wife and raise his own son and two daughters near the straggling town of Budapest, she never, ever said anything.

June 1020—York

Cnut’s ships sailed into York along the Ouse, their coming causing a stir of excitement that brought the townsfolk running to the river, with Archbishop Wulfstan approaching at a more dignified pace but nonetheless eager to greet his King.

The wharves were always busy; York, the capital of the North, was a trading centre on a par with London. Ships were being loaded or unloaded with cargo: fish, oil, salt, cloth, wool, pottery, everything and anything that could be bought, sold, or traded was stacked high or stored in barrels and bales.

To the far side of the river were the sailmakers’ bothies, the huge looms, the spars and frames to shape and stretch the wool into the great square sails. Wool from the fell and dale sheep, with their double-layered coat, used as the most efficient cloth for sails, the outer waterproof layer proving light in weight but strong in resilience and wear, while the softer inner layer served for warm garments for seafaring men. To the right of the sailmakers, the rope makers, with bales of raw hemp towering in stacked piles; then the shipbuilders, the repair workers. The bank of the river, as far as the eye could see, busy with the people of a water world.

On the townward side of the living waterway, the warehouses, traders’ stalls, the bustle of a crowded dockside. Cnut stood on the deck of his ship looking at it all, his men grinning, as eager as he to throw the mooring ropes ashore and make fast.

“Wulfstan!” Cnut called, seeing him standing surrounded by an array of monks and priests. “It is good to see you, my friend!”

“As it is good to see you!” Wulfstan tossed back, raising his voice to be heard above the cacophony of noise.

At the last minute the oarsmen lifted the oars out of the water, holding them upright as if a leafless forest had suddenly sprung from the decks, and Sea Serpent bumped gently against the wharfside, men on land reaching eagerly to secure her. Cnut leapt from the deck, greeted Wulfstan with enthusiasm.

“What, no wife to hail me also?” Cnut boomed good-naturedly, looking about him, searching through the faces and the outstretched hands reaching forward to touch him, slap his shoulders, clasp his arm. “Where is she? Waiting to greet me at the palace? Disgruntled because I took longer than I intended?”

Wulfstan spread his hands. “Alas, she is not here. The Queen rode to Whitby to worship at the shrine of Saint Hilda. We hope for her return within a day or two.”

Hiding his disappointment, Cnut made the best of it, keeping the grin, making a jest of things. “Perhaps it is as well. I can hardly be berated for my late homecoming if she is later than me, eh?”

A maidservant was being helped from the ship, in her arms a bewildered child. Cnut caught sight of them, hurried forward to take the girl, her face immediately lighting into pleasure, her arms and legs winding tight around his body.

“My Lord Archbishop,” Cnut announced, “may I present my daughter, the Princess Ragnhilda? She has been in Orkney this past while, but is to live with me now, as befits the daughter of a King.” The frustration showing through, added, “I was hoping my wife would be here to meet her.” He shrugged, joggled the girl in his arms, playfully bouncing her up and down until she giggled and became more at ease among all these strange faces and voices. “We’ll not let that bother us, though, will we, my honeycomb skat? Gone to Whitby you say, Wulfstan? Hie, then, bring up the horses; my daughter and I shall ride to join her!”

Green Man Bay

The sky was as blue as a kingfisher’s feather, the day as hot as a smith’s forge and as airless as a wax-sealed barrel. Divesting herself of her wimple and cloak had made little difference; Emma had felt as if she were melting. If only there were a wind, a breeze! Deciding to take the coastal road south, the royal entourage had made slow progress, for it was too hot to push the ponies into anything more than an amble; aside, what was the rush? There was no need to hurry to York, and Emma was enjoying her holiday from routine and the responsibilities and restraints of court. The sea route beckoned more than the high, desolate sweep of lonely moorland, and the intrigue of visiting Leofgifu’s place of childhood was irresistible. The woman had spoken of nothing else since coming north. York had been interesting, Whitby spiritually uplifting, but the cove where Leofgifu had been born and raised was alluring. Emma had developed a liking for this wild, rough coast and wanted more of its exciting freedom while she had chance to enjoy it. She was not, however, prepared for the heart-stopping fear of the narrow track along the grass-covered clifftop abruptly toppling into the nowhere infinity of the sky.

“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed with a high, girlish laugh as the three men ahead of her suddenly disappeared over the edge. “This is like leaping off the world!” Leofgifu, riding a similar, sturdy hill pony, chuckled. As a child she had intimately known this coast of high cliffs and ragged rocks, the sweep and curve of the bays, the constant voice of the sea.

“Our steading,” Leofgifu explained as the surefooted ponies picked their way down the track, “was two miles over yonder.” She waved her hand westward. “But my brothers and I, well, we came down here to Green Man Bay nigh on every day, when it were not thick with snow or raining fit to drown us.”

It was all gone now; her childhood home had been burnt to the ground by raiders; her family, save for a favourite nephew and a scatter of cousins, were all dead. The nephew, a lanky youth on the verge of manhood, to his exuberant delight, was riding with them.

The steep track wound through a straggle of woodland and undergrowth and followed a tumbling stream that leapt and gurgled from rock to rock in a torrent of white, chattering foam.

The Green Man, the Hooded Man of the Woods—he had the honour of several titles—had once lived here, it was said, in this steep-sided ravine. His hut had been built in the cleft of the valley above the shoreline, and he had lived on the fish of the ocean and the roots and berries of the earth. One night he had fallen during a storm and had lain among the rocks, his back broken, unable to move, crawl, or heave himself away from the incoming crash of the tide. They had found him, drowned. You could hear him, the local fishermen said, on those nights when the wind moaned and the sea roared; hear him calling for the gods of that time to help him. But they had not listened.

“All he had to do was call on the true God,” Leofgifu recounted as the ponies picked their way, one steady foot after the other, down the worn path. “If he had turned his face from those heathen gods and called for Christ, then he would have been saved.”

Turning to check that the children were safe, held tight within the firm clutches of two housecarls, Emma smiled. She had heard the tale of the Green Man already; another reason to come here, to see for herself where the legend had begun.

With the incline shallowing, the trees parted and the blue sea, beyond a wide expanse of sand, opened up before them. Kicking her pony to a trot, Emma urged it out into the open and turned, gape-mouthed to crane her neck upwards at the height of the soaring cliffs, the V of the ravine, cutting directly through them as if sliced with a sharpened sword. She kicked her feet from the stirrups and jumped to the sand, laughing as her boots sank into the sun-warmed softness.

“Come,” she called to Leofgifu as she reached up to take the babe, Harthacnut. “I would like nothing more than to sit here and let the sun bake me.”

Lulled by the song of the outward-going sea and the whisper of the wind, they all slept, stretched out on the sand or the flat rocks, the children included, even the ponies, hind hooves resting, heads down, ears lolling, eyes closed. The men on guard dozed. What harm would come to them here on an isolated beach at the foot of the cliffs?

Harthacnut woke first, demanding the attention of his wet nurse, who took him away to the shade of a sentinel rock beneath the cliff to satisfy his appetite. Emma, awake now, stretched lazily, stood, brushed the sand from her gown. The tide was far out, exposing the wide sweep of the curved bay and sun-gold sand. She bent, dabbled her hand in the cool bubble of the freshwater stream, moistened her lips, and bathed her hot face and neck. How long would it be before Cnut returned? She had begun to think this journey north to meet him had been a fool’s errand, that perhaps he had no intention of coming to York, but of going straight to the Humber and that bitch. She splashed her hand into the rush of the water, sending up a fountain of spray. Damn him! Damn all men.

The wet nurse was winding Harthacnut, the child sprawled over her shoulder, her hand patting his back, a task Emma did not object to doing herself. Strange how she enjoyed tending these two babes but had so loathed the touch of Edward and Alfred.

“Let me take him,” Emma offered, lifting her son into her arms and wandering along the sand as she soothed his whimpering. He was not a fretful child, but he took a while to settle after feeding; colic, the wet nurse said, but Emma thought it interest and intelligence, for he would look keenly at the world through his wide babe’s eyes, instantly attracted by movement, colour, and sound.

“Look at the gulls!” Emma said, turning him so he could watch the swoop of birds as they dived on what appeared to be the beached carcass of a dolphin. Wandering along, in the way that mothers do, Emma pointed out other things: the waders at the sea edge, the dazzle of the sun on the shining blueness, the white-patterned foam of the rolling breakers. Here and there, tables of flat rocks that peeped through the shingly sand, as if some giant child had stamped on them in a fit of temper.

With the child draped, content, over her shoulder, she wandered on, deep in thoughts of everything and nothing, drifting along the beach as if she were tide-nudged flotsam. The arc of the beach, flanked by the two arms of jutting headland, three miles apart, curved imperceptibly; a massive tumble of rocks lurched from the cliffs into the sand, and stopping to look behind at where she had walked, Emma discovered she had gone further than she had intended. The others were far off, more than a mile away. She decided to rest awhile, ease the ache in her legs, then start back. There was plenty of time. It would not be dark for hours yet. She seated herself on the sand, her back against a boulder. Harthacnut was sleeping soundly, and she closed her eyes. Dozed. Dreamt of Cnut beckoning her into a haze of white, brilliant light; dreamt of distant voices calling from across a vast and empty ocean, voices that changed to the high, persistent scream of the gulls and the rasping cough of the corncrakes.