The Forever Queen (13 page)

***

“We’ve got to find him, Godwine! We’ve got to!” Edmund slithered off his lathered pony, ran to the tavern door, and hammered on it with his bunched fist, Godwine leaning acrobatically from his own saddle to grab at the pony’s reins.

Godwine had held such high hopes of excitement when they had left London two weeks past; where had it all gone wrong? The sullen looks from the Oxford townsfolk, the mistrust in the air as thick as the sludge of a slurry pit. Perhaps if the rain had eased, things might have improved, but as it was, there had been barely any hunting or hawking, and then Emma had developed a fever that had sent her abed. At least she had kept boredom at bay in the hall, but with her absent, everything had settled into a sullen gloom. And now this! Godwine regretted coming, wished he had heeded his father’s doubts and had not insisted that Edmund had specifically wanted his company. Well, he would remember next time, if there was to be a next time. If they did not find Athelstan soon, there would probably not.

Edmund thumped again on the door, his other hand clicking at the latch, rattling the bolted door. “Open up! You must open up!”

This was the third tavern they had tried; the Cock and the Bear had both yielded nothing save for a rough telling-off and a threatened beating. Oxford tavern keepers were not known as early risers.

“Hold hard! What be the fuss?” From inside, the bolts were drawn back, the door creaking inward, a beard-stubbled, half-clothed man in need of a thorough wash scowled through the narrow opening. “What do you want? Getting me up at this hour? It had better be good, or I’ll take my belt to you.”

“I’m looking for my brother, Athelstan, the King’s son.”

“Well, he ain’t ’ere. Be off with you.”

Although eleven years old, Edmund felt the threat of tears. “He’s got to be!”

The door was closing.

“There’ll be a bag of coin in it if you know where he is!” Godwine called. Added with quick insight, “Sir.”

The door stayed open. “Copper or silver?”

“Silver.”

Edmund turned to frown at his friend. Where would they get silver coin from, for God’s sake?

Greed, as Godwine guessed it would, won the day.

“He’s over yonder at the Feathered Duck. Can’t see why he went there; my ale’s far better’n their muck. Ain’t fit for pig’s swill, their stuff. Just ’cos my two girls ain’t got such big teats on ’em as the slut over there.”

Edmund was already haring across the street, pounding at the door, yelling Athelstan’s name.

Sounds beyond the closed door, shuffling feet and curses. When it swung open, Edmund said nothing but darted straight through, ducking beneath the keeper’s arm and running for the back of the dim-lit interior. He burst through a rear door into a small, foul-smelling chamber, startling the two who were coupling beneath the musty bed furs.

“There’s no time for her!” Edmund panted, hauling back the covers and speaking in French to ensure the girl did not understand. “We have to leave.”

Athelstan lifted his face from the whore’s breasts, Edmund noting with an eleven-year-old’s increasing curiosity that the taverner had been right about the size of her assets.

“Go away,” his brother growled. “I’m busy.”

“There’s trouble. You have to get our Queen away—you, we, must leave Oxford-Shire. Now.”

“Your Queen, as I understand it, is ill. She is abed. As am I.”

Desperate, Edmund grasped his brother’s shoulder, hauled him round. “The Danish throughout England are preparing to raise rebellion against our father.” With another impatient shake, “Streona is to put an end to the unrest here in Oxford. He came to Islip first, to tell the Queen to leave. He is hopping bloody mad you were not there to take immediate care of it.”

His attention gained, Athelstan was at last listening. “Streona can go to the devil. I do not take orders from him.” He rolled from the bed, began dressing. “Is Oxford armed, then?”

“Not yet. Papa has stayed trouble by ordering the arrest of all Danish troublemakers everywhere north of London.”

Athelstan was scathing. “He has no hope of achieving that without starting a civil war. Who advised him of such folly?”

Edmund had an idea, but tactfully shrugged a noncommittal answer.

“I can guess. Streona.” Pulling on his boots, Athelstan suddenly stopped, set the left boot down. “Why must we take the Queen? Could we not leave her at Islip? She will come to no harm there, and we can ride faster without her.”

Edmund crossed to the door. “So,” he said with contempt, “you are, after all, like Streona? A man who thinks only of himself, with no care for honour or the protection of the innocent. What if Oxford does rebel and take up arms? Queen Emma will be the first one to die—after us—in case she is with child. I am only a boy, but even I know that for a fact.”

Athelstan blew a snort of derision down his nose. “They will not kill her; she is part Danish herself. They’ll set her inside a nunnery until certain she is barren.”

Edmund merely stood staring at his brother. If that was what he wanted to believe…

Athelstan picked up his braes, eased them over his buttocks, tied the lacings. Held his hands up in surrender. “You are right. They will kill her. It was a passing thought. A bad one. I apologise.”

13 November 1002—Islip, Oxfordshire

Lady? Lady! Stir yourself!” Emma woke abruptly, confused and disorientated from a heavy and fevered sleep. There was a man in her chamber? Why? To murder her?

Her heart pounding with fear, only dignity salvaged her composure. If they thought she would plead and beg for mercy, they were wrong. To her relief, she recognised Athelstan—and then a second fear burst into her mind: had he turned against his father?

“Lady. We must leave at once.” Athelstan was leaning over her, his hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her.

Thank God! He held no dagger!

“Leave? But why? I am unwell. I do not wish to go anywhere.” This illness had seen her to bed for four days with an aching body, a blinding headache, and alternating sweats and shivering. She had not eaten and had drunk only honey-sweetened, watered wine. The symptoms were easing but had left her weak and tired.

Despite being ill, she liked it here in the palace at Islip, a handful of miles north of Oxford. A place clean, warm, and well maintained. Especially, she admired the beech woods, dressed in their splendid autumn finery, that crowded beyond the perimeter fencing. Before falling so ill, she had walked there several times with Saffron, enjoying the delight of kicking at the leaves piled in dishevelled heaps and running, laughing up and down the slopes and banks, the dog joyfully barking at her heels. She peered with bruised, tired eyes into her stepson’s grave face. Her stay was to be a short happiness, then.

What had possessed Æthelred to command his eldest son to be her escort here she could not imagine. The young man had barely spoken a word to her, confining himself to nods and grunts. She assumed her husband had meant it as a show of trust, a gesture of peace between father and son. Whether Athelstan had accepted it as such, she had no idea; if he had, the peace was likely to be short-lived. The two were always disagreeing, and every argument ended with one of them storming out in a rage. Emma did not mind in the slightest when Athelstan retreated from court to spend isolated weeks in one of his own manors, for his absences were a welcome relief. The Æthelred’s rages were not so easy to endure, particularly if there were other things already itching at him like aggravating bites.

Reaching for a mantle, Emma asked, “What is wrong?” It was an effort to talk; her throat and neck hurt, making it difficult to swallow, to form the words in her dry mouth.

“Rebellion, Lady. We do not have the men to defend ourselves should Oxford decide to take up arms with the rest of the Danelaw. We are to join my father at Shaftesbury Abbey.”

This was not making sense to Emma. “Am I in danger?”

Athelstan answered with one curt word: “Yes.”

Her ladies, grasping the situation in a flutter of alarm, started to shoo Athelstan from the chamber, pulling clothing from the hanging poles, urging Emma to rise, get dressed.

“I do not think I can ride,” Emma protested wearily, swinging her legs from the bed, suppressing a wince of pain from her protesting body. “I do not have the strength to stand.”

Running his hand through his fair hair, Athelstan stood, perplexed, within the open doorway. Below, in the hall, there came sounds of hasty packing and preparing to leave. Outside, horses being led into the courtyard, chests and bundles being secured to harnessed pack ponies and mules. “I did not want to take the wagons,” he said, “they will slow us down.”

Damn! This whole thing was becoming a nightmare.

Emma pushed herself to her feet, tried a smile. “I will do my best not to delay you,” she said. Her face was pale, beads of sweat were scattered on her forehead. “Give me time to dress.”

Making a decision, Athelstan shook his head. “Get your ladies to wrap you warm and comfortable, then wait here. You shall ride up with me.”

“Pallig’s widow and children are in Oxford,” Emma stated, already drawing on her woollen stockings, ignoring the presence of a man. “Are they safely away?”

Athelstan reddened. To his shame, he had not thought of them, but then why should he? It was only the troublemakers Eadric Streona would be going after, not the women and children. “It is you I must get to safety,” he answered. “Please, be as quick as you can.”

Wanting to argue, Emma opened her mouth to protest, but Athelstan had retreated from the chamber, and she did not have the energy to summon him back.

Athelstan himself carried Emma down the wooden stairs, his glower silencing any remark from his brother or young Godwine, who were mounted and ready to leave. She weighed no more than a merlin; she would not have been able to ride alone, and a litter would be too slow. Lifting Emma onto his stallion’s withers, Athelstan vaulted into the saddle, his arm supportive around her waist. “Forgive the intimacy,” he murmured. “I can see no other way for you to travel.”

There was only the one good road south, and it passed close to Oxford. From two miles away they saw the smoke curling into the sky, nearer, heard the cries and screams. Athelstan cursed, urged his horse into a canter. Damn Streona! He had sent orders for him to wait until they were safely away. This was typical of the man, never seeing sense above stark impatience and always blaming the outcome to be someone else’s fault.

Emma’s eyes were dull, her skin burning. She lifted her head from Athelstan’s shoulder, looked towards the rise of Oxford’s surrounding walls. “What is it?” she asked, frowning, forcing her sluggish mind to concentrate. “Why is the town burning, Athelstan? There is something wrong; we must stop.”

How he regretted, through the years to come, not heeding her instinctive concern, but what could he have done had he complied? Could he have stopped the killing and the slaughter? Would the lives of the innocent have been saved had he reined in and entered Oxford? Or would more have died on this Saint Brice’s Day had he tried to curb Streona’s vengeance? Who could say that the Æthelings and Emma too might not have fallen among those being savagely massacred? Once the smell of blood had been let loose in the air, the lust of killing always took hold. Regret only came after, when the blood has been washed away.

Tightening his grip around Emma’s waist, Athelstan dug his spurs into his grey’s flanks and drove him forward into a reckless gallop, bellowing at his small emergency retinue of men to follow close behind, swords drawn.

Exhausted, light-headed, Emma buried her head in his mantle, shutting out as well as she could the desperate cries of death and the sounds of its making, Athelstan’s own vigorous blasphemy against God and his contempt of his father and Eadric Streona loud in her ears.

“Gunnhilda is in there,” she whimpered once, knowing that even had he heard, her stepson could do nothing about it.

Athelstan had liked Pallig. It had been Pallig who had taught him how to use a sword and axe, how to defend himself with a shield; Pallig who had first taken Athelstan, as a young, greenstick lad, whoring. None of this Emma knew, nor, as her husband’s eldest son urged his horse down the road past Oxford’s closed gates, did she realise that tears were streaming from his eyes.

***

Edwine Thursson had done his best, but his best had not been sufficient. He was arrested with the rest of the Danish traders as they fought to protect their women and children. Edwine himself had organised their safety by ushering the vulnerable, the wives, the mothers, the young, the elderly and infirm, into the sanctuary of Oxford’s blessed church of Saint Frideswide. A typical Saxon church, plain but functional: rectangular, virtually windowless, the walls fashioned from split trunks, the roof reed-thatched.

Streona’s mastiff dogs, bred for killing, attacked any who had not heeded Edwine’s hasty orders to flee, their bloodstained fangs ripping at the throats of terrified women. Children, their small hands slipping from the frantic clutching of their mothers’ fingers, were scooped up by Streona’s men, their heads slammed against stone walls or solid doorposts.

Eadric Streona had every prisoner hanged, without exception. The last view Edwine Thursson had as the noose was set around his neck was of the burning embers of a church. Charred timbers, piles of ash and rubble. Incongruously, the door lintel stood, soot-blackened but unharmed, the only part of the church that had been built of stone. As the rope tightened and his legs began to kick, the urine and faeces to scour from his body, he recognised what else lay among the red-hot debris of Saint Frideswide. Those weird, twisted items were not part of the church, were not benches or candelabra or decoration. He focused his remaining attention on one clear thing as his tongue swelled and the blood was choked from reaching his brain. It was a woman’s hand, gnarled, black. Burnt.

He prayed, as the life left him, that those who had died inside there would forgive him for his cowardice. For the fact that his death was so much easier than had been theirs.