The Price of Blood (35 page)

The steward beckoned him into the inner chamber, and here the packing was already completed. Coffers were shut and stacked. Emma sat at a small table while her clerk stood at her side holding a neat pile of what must be letters. A brazier along the far wall was the only other furniture left in the room.

As Athelstan entered, the clerk bowed himself out, leaving them alone. Emma rose to greet him.

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” she said. “I need to—”

“Tell me that you are not going to Worcester,” he said.

“Not to Worcester,” she replied. “I go to Headington.”

“Headington? To my sister?” Edyth was at the royal estate there, awaiting the birth of her child. “Is all well with her?”

She handed him a parchment and he read it with increasing astonishment. It was a letter demanding that Emma send Margot to attend Edyth’s lying-in, couched in language so imperious and condescending that he would have expected Emma to burn it, not agree to it.

“It is presumptuous, is it not?” she asked, with a wry smile. “The king’s daughter issuing commands to the queen? It shows how powerful Edyth and her husband have become. Or think they have become.” She clasped her hands together and began to pace the chamber. “I have been forced from the king’s side for nearly a year now, and in that time Edyth has insinuated herself into the role of queen. It cannot continue. I would risk the king’s wrath and go straight to the court at Worcester if Godiva were not too young to travel so far. Instead it seems I must content myself with a river journey to Headington so that I may remind Edyth who is England’s rightful queen.”

He tossed the letter onto the table. He recalled now that Edward, too, was at Headington.

“And you will see your son, of course,” he said. Emma did not fool him; it was Edward who drew her to Headington. There was nothing that Emma would not do for her son. Even her eagerness to resume her place at the king’s side was all for Edward.

“Of course I want to see my son,” she said.

He strode over to the glowing brazier, where he warmed his hands and did not look at her. He wanted to rebuke her for wanting to leave London—for wanting to leave him; but he did not have the right.

Was there any greater fool than a man who loved where it was not wanted?

“So what is it that you wish of me?” he snapped. He knew that he sounded cold and angry. Well,
by the cross
, that was how he felt. She would remove herself from his protection, far from his reach, and he could not help but resent it. He was only mortal.

“I must make a grand show of force and power when I descend upon Edyth,” she said, “and I want your assurance that you will have no need of my hearth troops here. Is it true that the Danes have returned to the camp at Benfleet? Is London safe?”

He hesitated. He could lie. He could persuade her that he needed her Norman warriors, and that she would be courting disaster if she set foot outside the city’s walls. But there was a trust between them that he would not destroy with a lie, even if it meant sending her away from him.

“My men and I shadowed the Danes all the way to Benfleet,” he said. “I expect they will remain in their camp through the Yuletide.”

“And then?”

He shrugged. “They will have to forage for food again, but I do not think that they will come to London. We have convinced them that they are wasting their time trying to break through our defenses. They tried stealth and were repulsed. Their attempt to fire our ships in the Thames met with no success, and their recent effort to lure us out of the city to give them battle failed as well.”

He stared into the glowing coals, tormented still by that memory. A large band of armed shipmen, rabid with drink, had formed a shield wall just out of bowshot from the archers that he had placed upon the wall. They had hurled insults and curses, challenging the defenders on the ramparts to come out and face them in open combat. He had seen it for what it was: a last, desperate effort to get them to open the city gates. Knowing this, he had given strict orders that the gates remain shut.

When no one ventured out to meet their challenge, the shipmen brought forward a group of English men and women, their hands bound behind their backs, presumably taken captive somewhere along the Thames shore.

The poor wretches were forced to their knees while behind them their captors continued to shout and threaten. After a time, a Dane stepped up to one of the prisoners and casually sliced his throat. There were shouts of outrage all along the wall, and Athelstan, imagining the terror of the remaining captives who could only wait to die, very nearly gave the order to attack. He knew, though, that if he should do so, much worse would follow.

The city gates remained closed.

They were butchered one by one, so that the last to die, a woman, was forced to watch all the others die before her. They had wept, howled for mercy, begged for rescue, while he and his army had watched the grim spectacle from the safety of their walls.

The Danes had left the bodies to rot in the mud and the gore, and the next day the shipmen had decamped. When at last the Londoners went out to bury their dead, he had counted the corpses. There were thirty of them—exactly the number of the Danish attackers who had first attempted to sneak into the city in the fog, and whose corpses he had ordered tossed outside the wall.

He understood the message:
An eye for an eye
. After all, it was what war was all about.

He was suddenly aware of Emma standing beside him. She must have read his grim thoughts, for she placed her hand on his arm and her expression was soft with compassion.

“You could not have saved them,” she said.

“I know,” he murmured. “But I cannot forget them. There is a debt owing, and the shipmen must be made to pay it.”

And on it would go, blood for blood on either side until the cost became too great for one side to bear.

“What will you do,” she asked, “now that the Danes are gone from your gates?”

He drew in a long breath and released it slowly. There were so many ways to answer that question.

“We will sharpen our swords,” he said, “and make ready to fight them again in the spring.”

She nodded.

“God grant you victory,” she whispered.

He gave her a long, sober look, took her by the hand, and studied their twined fingers. The words of a prophecy that he had long dismissed came back to him.
He who would hold the scepter of England must first hold the hand of the queen.

He had believed once that it signified her son, a child whose tiny hand had clutched at his mother’s fingers. Yet now Emma’s fingers lay in his grasp, and he could feel the tension, sharp as a knife blade, that ran between them. If he tried to hold Emma, she would pull away, so for now he must let her go.

He released her hand, but he held her gaze for a moment as he said, “And God grant you a safe journey, my queen.”

He had taught himself patience. His father would not live forever. Someday the crown—and the queen—must belong to him.

December 1009

Headington, Oxfordshire

Emma stood at the prow of the royal ship as it nosed toward Headington under a sky pregnant with snow. Four more vessels followed hers, all of them riding low in the water, for they were crowded with attendants, supplies, household goods, and armed men from Windsor and Cookham as well as from London.

As her ship glided toward the shore, Emma scanned the palisade that surrounded the royal manor, searching for her son’s standard. But there was no ætheling’s banner floating above the towers that framed Headington’s gate.

Edward had left, then. The king must have summoned him to Worcester for the Yule feast or sent him elsewhere—somewhere beyond her reach.

She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin a little higher, for she could not show any sign of disappointment or regret in front of Edyth. It would be like handing her stepdaughter a weapon with which to wound her, and Edyth had enough of those already. She would not hesitate to use them, for she would surely resent the display of queenly power that was about to be paraded before her.

Emma hoped that the ensuing hostilities would be conducted in private and would be relatively bloodless although, knowing Edyth, she guessed that neither outcome was likely.

Once ashore, she led her attendants up the gravel path and through the open manor gates. She saw that word of her approach had preceded her, for within the king’s great hall a formal greeting had been prepared. Light glittered from the massive central hearth and from dozens of blazing candles and torches. The hall was filled with women—not only those of Edyth’s household, but also many of the noble wives of Æthelred’s court who had been invited to attend his daughter’s lying-in. Edyth herself stood on the dais, hugely pregnant, yes, but magnificently gowned in a loose robe of deep blue wool, its hem and its long, wide sleeves embroidered with gold. Golden threads glimmered in the mantle that was flung around her shoulders, and her honey-colored hair was caught up in a white silken coif held in place with a golden band. She looked as regal as any queen.

Emma was not surprised. It was an old ploy—the lavish display of royal wealth to inspire awe among the nobility and thus secure their allegiance. But if Edyth believed that she could play that game against a crowned queen and win, she had miscalculated.

Slipping her cloak of white fox from her shoulders so that it fell into the hands of the attendant following behind her, she strode confidently forward, aware that the firelight in the hall would be reflected in the shimmering silk of her golden gown, in the loops of gold at her throat, and in the twisted gold circlet upon her brow. The women in the hall made obeisance as she moved through them, and she greeted many of them with a word or a touch that was met with glad smiles. When she reached the dais she stopped, her eyes on Edyth.

The girl was near the end of her pregnancy. Beneath the lovely coif and gown her face and body were swollen, and her exhaustion was written in the smudges beneath her eyes. Emma’s heart contracted with pity as she remembered that other Edyth—the girl who had loved to listen to the singing of the king’s scop with her head resting against Emma’s knee.

But that young girl no longer existed, and Emma hardened her heart against her stepdaughter. Margot’s words of caution, uttered years ago, hummed in her mind.
You must look to your own children.
Try to mother the children of the king, and you will break your heart against stone.
Emma was here not for Edyth’s sake, but for the sake of her own son and baby daughter.

She continued to gaze, wordless and unsmiling, into Edyth’s resentful face, but the king’s daughter made no gesture of reverence or even of welcome.

Foolish girl
, Emma thought.
Do you not realize that you have already lost this ridiculous game
?

Standing beside Edyth on the dais, the aged wife of Ealdorman Godwine, Winfled, was making her obeisance and Emma saw the old woman tug at Edyth’s gown. At last, face contorted in fury, Edyth bent her head and dropped her eyes. It was a sullen gesture, but it was submission nonetheless.

She responded by taking Edyth’s hand and formally kissing her cheek.

“I thank you, Edyth,” she said, her voice ringing through the hall, “for such a lavish welcome during this holy season.” To Edyth she whispered, “Make some courteous reply, and then we will retire to your apartments. I would speak with you alone while my chambers are made ready.”

Edyth’s mouth gave a quick, resentful twist, reminding Emma that the girl had never been good at hiding her feelings.

Eadric, she thought, had not yet taught his wife how to dissemble. She would learn soon enough.

“As Queen Emma is weary from her journey,” Edyth’s voice was brittle as glass, “we shall dine together in private this evening.”

Edyth led the way to the women’s quarters, but when they reached Edyth’s chamber it was Emma who dismissed the attendants, even Margot.

Edyth glared at her. “Your presence here, my lady, is completely unnecessary. I asked for Margot’s assistance, not yours.”

“As I remember it, you did not ask at all,” Emma said. “You commanded.” She made a circuit of the chamber, snatching up a thick woolen shawl from the bed and wrapping it around her shoulders before claiming a chair next to the brazier. Silk, she reflected, made a stunning impression, but it did little to keep out the cold. She studied the girl-woman before her, noting again the blue smudges beneath her eyes. “Your babe disturbs your rest, I think. Lie down upon your bed, if you wish. Your feet must be swollen. Mine looked like loaves of bread in the last month before Godiva was born.”

Edyth ignored her suggestion and instead sat on a cushioned bench, leaning her head against the wall and closing her eyes.

“You wished to speak to me?” she asked, her voice sullen. “What is it?”

“I expect you can already guess what I am going to say, Edyth, but in case you do not, let me be perfectly plain. You may be a great lady now, the wife of the noble Eadric as well as the eldest daughter of the king, but you do not wear a crown and you never will. When you presume to command me, you presume too much. I am your queen, and you will give me the respect that is my due both within these walls and before the world.”

Edyth opened her eyes and her face was cold. This, Emma thought, would be every bit as unpleasant as she had anticipated.

“Why should I respect you?” Edyth asked. “You are a queen with no power.”

Emma looked at her askance. Edyth was old enough to understand how power worked, but did she really grasp all its subtleties? She said, “If the measure of power is how close one stands beside the king, then at this moment in time I am, indeed, powerless. But if power is measured by lands, by wealth, and by ties to men of influence, then I count myself powerful indeed.” The archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of Winchester, and Ealdorman Ælfric were even now interceding with the king on her behalf, and the bishop of London was on his way to Worcester to add his voice. She expected to be summoned to her husband’s side before winter’s end, but that was not something she need share with Edyth. Instead she continued, “You must understand that a queen’s power, like that of a lord or an ealdorman, waxes and wanes like the moon and the tides. Nevertheless, it is not my power that deserves your respect, Edyth, but the choice that your father made when he wed me. Dishonor the queen, and you dishonor the king himself.”