The Forever Queen (54 page)

“Then lose all you have,” Cnut said with a simple, careless shrug.

And then the women did scream, and the men drew back, afraid and alarmed. No one carried weapons within the hall, but there were still the bright, gleaming war axes arrayed on the walls to show strength and power. It only took a moment for Erik to have one of them down and in his hands, a further moment to have the blade scything, with a dull, sucking thud, through the neck below Eadric Streona’s open-mouthed, horrified expression.

A long minute of stunned and total silence. Leofric stood, swallowing bile, his mouth working, no sound coming from it, his face white. He had not liked Eadric, but liked less the smell of blood and murder. He looked from the fountain spouting from the grotesque neck stump to Godwine, to Erik. They were not grinning, but their expressions were those of fulfilled satisfaction.

Had this whole thing been an organised drama? Had Eadric, unwittingly, been lured into assuring the manner of his own death? Leofric wiped his hand over his face, found his hand shaking. This had been murder—planned, calculated murder.

Cnut stepped forward, grimaced at the mess on the floor. He clicked his fingers at two servants. “Spread sawdust and clean rushes over all this, and have the body thrown into the stagnant water of the marshes. Traitors like him do not warrant Christian burial.” To Erik, with a single brief touch on his shoulder, said, “I would be obliged if you could take the trouble to find a suitable container and send the head to my former wife. It is a gift I promised her some while ago.”

Erik did not query the order, nor, surprisingly, did Emma. But then Emma was the sort of woman who appreciated the significance of such a gesture.

February 1018—Medway Estuary

Cnut was furious, his rage made worse by the fact that the renewed raids on England’s coast, and a direct challenge to the legitimacy of his crown, were commanded by his own brother, Harald.

“Does he think he has some God-given right to annoy me?” Cnut bellowed as he strode about the chamber, semi-clothed, picking things up and throwing them angrily away.

From the bed, Emma watched, half amused, half sympathetic. “You must admit it was astute of him to take advantage of this rare lull in what is normally foul winter weather.”

“Astute? Astute!” Cnut lifted his hands in the air. “Harald has never been that. Greedy, lazy, good for nothing, ja, but astute? Never!” One of the reasons for Swein to have brought Cnut with him to England was that he and his brother had always squabbled as boys. Their father had hoped the expanse of sea between the two would put an end to the bickering, and each would be content with his own and call truce with their warring. Wasted hopes, for, if anything, the antagonism had increased twofold.

The problem was that Cnut’s hired mercenaries wanted owed payment and did not care to wait any longer for it. They had scuttled to Harald with their grievance, and, gleefully seizing his chance to better his brother, he had agreed to help—by demanding forfeiture from Cnut.

“Pay the men their geld, and he will have nothing to goad you with,” Emma said simply. “It is coming, is it not? Will be paid by Easter in full?”

The reason behind his strutting anger was that Cnut had been taken by surprise by the fleet of Danish ships entering the Medway estuary two days past. The havoc they had created was, according to the messenger who arrived at first light, devastating in its intensity of violence. Two settlements and one of Cnut’s own manors had been destroyed, the people slain, the buildings gutted, and cattle slaughtered. The cycle of raiding and killing started again. Brother against brother this time. For England, would it never end? Would peace never be allowed to settle and prosper?

“Pay? Do as he commands? Never! But I will show him who is the better King!” Cnut whirled to the door, hauled it open, and bellowed for his captain of housecarls to be fetched. Swirling back into the room—leaving the door wide open for the world and a fluster of draughts to peer in, he tore on his clothes, shouting his orders to the servants who had come running.

“My fleet is moored at Greenwich for the winter. See the ships are made ready and launched. By noon. I want to be sea-bound by noon, do you hear?”

“Is that possible, my dear?” Emma asked, her calm tempering his flurried agitation.

He was pulling off a boot he had put on the wrong foot in his haste to be dressed. “Possible? Of course it is. The keels are repaired; all that is needed is for them to be launched and for the sails and rigging to be hauled out.” He stamped his foot into the correct boot. “I will have the bastard! He will not be expecting me so soon. He always did underestimate my ability.”

“If I did not know better,” Emma said, leaning back on the pillows and resting her arms behind her head, “I would say all this bluster was nothing but show. I think”—she leant forward, wagged a finger at her husband—“I think you are enjoying this!”

Cnut crossed the room and placed a lingering kiss on her lips. “I am. When the Archbishop placed that crown on my head, I pledged I would not be another Æthelred. I vowed that once all owed debts were paid, there would be no more tribute, no more í-víking looting for spoils and gain. I promised that England would be safe in my care, and by God, Emma, I intend to show I can be trusted as a man who keeps my word.”

Emma ran her finger across his cheek and over his lips. With all seriousness, said, “Keep just one promise, and you will prove you are not Æthelred.”

In some respects fighting at sea was easier to command than the shambling array of undrilled men in a land battle. There, among the mud and the blood, it was often every man for himself; at sea, the macabre dance of each warship was easier to choreograph, for a crew sailed and fought as one, a united brotherhood of comrades. The í-víking thought of the sea as his natural element; he was born to the sea, saw no fear of dying at sea, although there were fewer options with a ship, for the rules were confined by the mood of tide and weather. As on land, where the selection of terrain was important, calm, sheltered stretches of water were preferred for a fight at sea, the advantage often going to the commander who could block a narrow entrance or exit and have his flanks protected by rocks. Or who could blockade a wide river mouth.

In the Medway estuary, Cnut took the initiative by doing just that. He could have had the option of sailing upriver and picking a fight somewhere along the muddy banks or in one of the many boggy marshes—a fool’s choice for one who knew the river, although one Harald, who did not know its temperaments, had hoped to entice his brother into. Cnut, listening to local knowledge, was content to sit and wait at anchor, riding the flood and ebb currents of the estuary, waiting for Harald to grow bored and make his move. By sun-up on the third day, Harald had decided on his limited options, had no intention of running the blockade, of escaping under full sail and oar by attempting to dodge and weave the waiting line of ships. But neither could he risk being holed up along a river where supplies would rapidly decrease, and abandoning his ships to march away overland was out of the question. Instead, he attempted to draw Cnut forward, by lashing his ships together, keel to keel, to make a joined bridge of boats, over which his men could move with ease and fight where necessary. Harald, after all, had more than fifty ships, Cnut a mere twenty.

Another advantage of sailing over a land army: the initial inspection and probing of strengths and weaknesses was easier to establish.

Godwine’s ship was alongside Cnut’s dragon craft, a high-sided monster boasting thirty benches carrying one hundred and twenty men. She had been Swein’s ship, his joy and pleasure.

“See the state of their rigging?” Cnut said to Godwine, pointing to Harald’s fleet. “It is old, some of the sails are salt-worn and wind-battered, too. These men have not pampered their craft through the winter; they have been too busy mithering about how hard-done-by they are. A ship is like a woman, my friend; she prefers to have her hair clean and shining, her gown new-woven. She likes to wear expensive jewellery and to feel the gentle, caressing hand of her lover on the curve of her back. Leave a ship in last year’s rags and to sit alone in the cold and damp, then she will sulk and not serve you well.”

Much of this Godwine knew, for his father had told him the same thing; indeed, Godwine’s mother had often complained Wulfnoth treated his ships better than he did his wife. The moment of nostalgia at the unbidden memory of his parents passed. They were gone to God, resting at peace. This was the here, the now. His life.

“At sea it is not easy to keep the secrets of your strength from an enemy. On land you can pitch fewer or more tents, scatter your campfires to confuse a watching spy of your numbers. You cannot do so at sea, for it is easy to count the oars and the men rowing them.” Cnut indicated the end ship of the lashed row, her steerboard-side hull easily viewed. “See how she has not been cleaned of barnacles? Nor had her dragon crest repainted? I would wager there is rotten wood below her sea-line.”

“Her height is impressive, though. She will be hard to board if we manage to get in close.”

Ja, Godwine was right, but Sea Serpent was no stunted shrimp, either. Enough of the talk! Cracking his fingers together, he grinned at Godwine. “Get your best men forward, and let us fight!”

They were ready, each of Cnut’s ships cleared for action, anything movable on the deck stowed beneath the rowing benches or, if not entirely necessary, ditched overboard. Weapons were to hand, first the spears for throwing, then swords, daggers, and axes for close combat, each man’s shield, as he sat at the rowing bench, oars firm in his hands, slung across his shoulders. It hampered movement only slightly, kept a great amount of wind and salt spray from their backs and the death-bringer of a thrown spear. The bravado of hanging them out along the side was for decoration alone and confined to a swaggering entry into harbour.

Cnut brought his ships up slowly, the equivalent of a walk, no point in wasting effort before it was needed. Gradually he fanned the fleet out to form the attack, initially, a horseshoe shape in front of the enemy line, held until they could swing aside to left and right and approach from the rear. The elite fighters, and those of proven worth with accurate spear throwing, were mustered in the bows for maximum effect, the strategy to surround and come in close, grappling and then boarding. It was then close-quarter fighting, the oars abandoned and every man for himself. The difference from a land battle? Burial of the dead was easier at sea.

Cnut was leading the centre, to fight head on; Godwine had been given command of the left flank and the captain of Cnut’s housecarls, Halfdan, the steerboard side. He was a good man, Halfdan, having served alongside Cnut’s father and transferred his loyalty with fervour and enthusiasm to the son. Godwine was a little green behind the ears in experience, but he was one of England’s most proficient sailors and knew as much about the sea and the handling of ships as did Cnut. Perhaps more, if truth were told. Ideally, the great men such as Erik and Thorkell would have been preferable to take command, but they were not in London when Harald cleaved into the Medway and made his presence known, and besides, it was not always the men who carried the highest titles who made the best fighters.

“Do me well today,” Cnut called to the both of them, his hand raised in salute, his head high, eyes and heart alight with anticipation, “and you shall be handsomely rewarded.”

“To fight as your companion and friend is reward enough!” Godwine shouted in eager response. A man clever with his words who would, as Emma had once judged, go far.

There was much Godwine wanted, and he was astute enough to realise this was his opportunity to get it. Already, through his service to Queen Emma, he had shown he was a man to be trusted; now he could show he was also a man to be reckoned with. Recklessly, some would say, he drove his crew into the ship’s full capacity of oar power as Cnut signalled for the pace to increase, the thresh of spindrift, the grunts of effort as muscles strained and pulled, the creak of wood as the oars plunged and rose in perfect unison.

“Lift her! Lift her!” the oarmaster cried, as the ship sprang into life and the spray flew, salt-tinged, to their lips and hair, blown by the wind and the speed of their passing.

“Pause, steerboard side!” Godwine called, signalling with his hand to bring the craft round in a tight curve. “Lift!” he bellowed a few seconds later, and the oars swooped, and the craft leapt forward, as if she were a horse released at last into a gallop.

She rammed, bow-on, into the poor-maintained craft that Cnut had pointed out, and the enemy hull shattered, splintering like summer-dried kindling beneath a man’s stamping boot. Their spears were thrown; the men, braced for the collision, using the momentum of force to leap onto the tilting deck, their axes swinging, swords plunging, mouths open, yelling the war cry, “Cnut! Cnut!” Leaving a skeleton crew behind to steady the oars, the men hurtled onto the disabled craft and plunged onto the next, not stopping, not wavering except to kill or maim. From the centre, from the far flank, the same was happening, the cries of the wounded and the dying muffling the agitation of the gulls swooping and diving overhead.

The fighting was fierce, vicious, and soon done. The disadvantage of war at sea for ships lashed together: if the tactic failed, escape was impossible.

Godwine had reached the sixth ship; if he had paused to look behind, would have seen decks slippery with blood and the steam of men’s spilt guts. The carnage of battle resembling the butcher’s table after the autumn slaughter. He stumbled, landing awkwardly as he jumped from one ship to the next, his ankle giving way beneath his weight. He cursed, aware that a man on his knees was vulnerable, heard the sound of a sword as its blade whistled through the air, tried to throw himself to the side—and the man fell, the sword still gripped in his clasped hands, his head, from eye sockets upwards, gone, brains and gore and blood spraying over Godwine’s already bloodied and rented chain hauberk.