The Forever Queen (65 page)

“But he splashed me!” Harthacnut wailed, attempting to wriggle from her grasp. “He splashed water right in my face!”

“Do not go tale-telling to me, lad. I plainly saw you! Now, get you inside and stay there until I think fit to release you!”

Screaming his protest, the sound squawking like a henhouse full of fox-chased chickens, Leofgifu bore Harthacnut away, mindful of his whirling arms and kicking feet.

“I reckon my lad and yours both need a switch on their backsides,” Gytha observed.

“Aye, but it is the fathers who let them get away with it,” Emma answered wryly. “‘They’re just being lads,’ they say and give them no more than a frown and a pat on the head.”

Gytha chuckled in amused agreement. Unless the sin was truly serious, it was not she who was the soft one in the household, but Godwine. Comforting to know Emma considered the situation to be the selfsame in the royal hall.

***

For two hours Harthacnut sat nursing his resentment, hunched in a corner, watching the intricate efforts of a spider repair a torn web. Come the lowering of evening, they all trooped in from the stream—his mother, Aunt Gytha, his sisters, Swegn—all laughing. Laughing at him. He swept his hand down through the new-completed web, destroying the hours’ work, stumped from the hall and out into the evening air, not caring that his mother was sharply calling him back.

He headed straight for the stream, but it was deeper now, filling, like the entire inlet, with the flood tide. Men were down at the boats making ready to sail, fishing boats, traders’ craft—Bosham was a busy harbour, with or without Cnut in nearby residence. He wandered down to the shoreline, stooping halfway along to retrieve the toy wooden boat that the argument had been over. Trust Swegn to leave it behind; it would have been there all night, then forgotten and lost. Well, it was Harthacnut’s now. Swegn could mither all he liked, but he would not get it back!

A wagon stood outside the open doors of the mill barn, half emptied of its load of grain. Much of the harvest in these parts came straight to the mill for grinding, the flour stored in great barrels raised off the ground to keep them dry and vermin-free. To allow room for the cats and weasels to creep underneath hunting for rats.

The bread baked was coarse-ground stuff, flat, and often burnt on one side, doughy on the other. Their bread within the household was made from wheat flour; that gave the flat loaves more of a rise than the poor man’s diet of rye or barley bread, although many a nobleman insisted barley was food fit only for horses or the fermenting of beer. The water-turned mills had been a rarity a few years past, but their value had spread as rapid as their building; every Lord had ensured a mill was installed in at least one of the villages; Cnut had one near every residence. For the villagers, like the plough teams, the mills were a communal facility, jointly operated, their worth adding to the economy and an easier life.

The massive, water-driven, oak-wood wheel with its elm gearwheels transmitted power through the solidity of a shaft, also of oak and banded with iron, and all of it turning with creaks and groans, the great, round, grinding slabs of the quern stones. The mill wheel turning slowly, with the force of several horses, better and more efficient than a single woman using her arm to grind the corn laboriously into flour. The wheel was not turning, its huge brake rammed in place, for it operated one way only, on the ebb tide, a faster, more controllable push against the paddles.

Wandering over for a closer look, Harthacnut stood at the edge of the open culvert, a deep, narrow channel, especially dug with sluice gates to regulate the flow during high tides. The gates were open, the scummy water flooding in. He ought not to be here—the children were not allowed near the mill, but then children made a habit of going where they were forbidden.“Harthacnut? Harthacnut!” Ragnhilda’s voice, floating on the lazy breeze. “Harthacnut? Where are you? Supper is served.” Stubborn, Harthacnut stayed where he was, allowing the darkening evening to enfold him like a shrouding cloak. The girl spotted him. She was a serious child who accomplished her expected chores and duties in earnest and with a willing heart, doing anything to please her papa and the woman who was his wife. Ragnhilda was aware Emma was not her natural mother, but who else had she to love and cherish? Perhaps if Papa were not so often gone from home…ah, well, as Leofgifu often said, if perhaps were a horse, then all would ride.

The sun had been hot today, and she had enjoyed playing in the stream, but now she was hungry and tired, wanted only her supper and her bed. She had been irritated that Leofgifu had sent her to seek Harthacnut. Why should she? She was not a servant. But Leofgifu had asked her in a kindly way, saying please, indicating she was busy with the babes, and Ragnhilda was a child eager to help those she loved. A pity it was Harthacnut she was sent to find; she did not much love him.

“Leofgifu says to come now. Everyone is soon to be seated at table; we are to have ours first in the kitchens.”

“Go away. I will not eat in the kitchens. I am not a servant like you.”

“Do not be silly. You know full well we always eat in the kitchens, Harthacnut.”

“I am a Prince. I should eat at table.”

“And I am a Princess, but you do not hear me complaining. Now come on!” Irritably Ragnhilda lunged forward, aiming to grab the child’s arm. He swung away, her fingers missing, but knocking against the toy boat, which flew from his grip and spiralled into the churning, bubbling water filling the mill channel. It sank, rose, bobbed on the surface, twirling with the force of the eddying current.

“You stupid dolt!” Harthacnut shrieked. “You sham-legged, poxed whore!” As with all his swearing, he was astute at picking up phrases that adults frequently used and were beyond his comprehension of meaning. Wildly he flung out his hand, clawing at her hair. “You fetch it back!” he yelled, kicking and punching at her. “You climb down there and fetch it back!”

“Let me go!” the girl shouted, furious, frightened. “You let me go! Papa shall hear of this! Let me go!”

“Fetch it back! Fetch it, I say!” and Harthacnut pushed, with all his weight, with all his strength he pushed, slamming into the girl, toppling her off balance. She fell, screaming, down into the green darkness of the water, and, like the boat, she went under. But she was heavier than a wooden toy; she wore skirts and boots. Unlike the boat, she did not come up again.

Harthacnut stood, frozen, watching the tumble of water, the splash and churn as it flowed past the wheel. When they came to fetch him in, he pointed silently and said nothing.

They found her when the tide had ebbed out. The great wheel for once held still and silent by its brake, the men prodding with poles and sticks, dreading what they would find. The undercurrent had taken her up against the wheel itself, and her hair had been caught between the worn cracks of a submerged paddle. They hoped she had been dead before then, had drowned quickly as she first went under, not slowly, entangled and submerged, unable to escape.

With Cnut away, it was Godwine’s duty to ask the boy what had happened; the Earl found him, sitting alone on the stone steps that led down from the wall surrounding the manor yard to the causeway, which at high tide was covered halfway up by seawater. Harthacnut was tossing pebbles at a post, attempting to hit it, missing every throw.

“Did she fall, boy?” Godwine asked gruffly.

“Of course she fell,” Harthacnut answered, his head lifting, mouth pouting, defiant. He was afraid of Godwine, for he was a large, gruff-voiced man who often bellowed and raged when things went wrong.

Several times he had seen Godwine whipping Swegn, once only last week because he had caught the boy deliberately stamping on a nest of duck eggs. Cnut had never struck his son; he laughed and ruffled his hair when Emma sent him to his father for some misdemeanour or other, declaring boys were boys. Emma occasionally smacked him on the legs, which stung but was bearable. Once she had paddled his backside with her house slipper, and Harthacnut had cried for an entire two hours before Leofgifu had come to cheer him with a beaker of milk and sticky honey spread on new-baked bread.

“What happened?” Godwine asked again, standing below the boy, his arms folded, expression stern.

Harthacnut shrugged his shoulders, lied. “She slipped.”

“And you did not think to shout? To come and get anyone? Get help?”

“I thought she would get out.” That was truth; he was not aware of what drowning meant. He had been told of the danger of water, but he was a child; the adults’ constant babble of warnings went over his head with no more notice than when the wild geese took wing.

Godwine stared suspiciously at the boy. There was something about Harthacnut he did not like. No, it was not like or dislike, more something about him he did not trust. Swegn, his own son, was wilful and naughty; Godwine was the first to admit he was going to be difficult to control in future years, but Swegn admitted his offences, was almost proud of them. Harthacnut lied too easily.

“God help you, boy, if you are not telling me the truth of this,” Godwine said. “I have to tell your father when he returns from London that his daughter is dead. It is not a task I relish. He loved Ragnhilda; we all did.”

Harthacnut did not believe him. Why would Father be sad? She was nothing but a useless girl, and he had Gunnhild, another girl, anyway. He, Harthacnut, was the important one, was he not?

It came as a shock for the boy to discover that his father could weep. Troubled him when Cnut, on his return to Bosham, walked straight past him and went to stand, for hours, beside the millstream, his shoulders hunched and shaking, great sobs bursting from his mouth. More of a shock when, attempting to approach him, Cnut had snarled at Harthacnut to go away.

Emma was at a loss what to do. Her husband would allow no one near him. Harthacnut kicked and scratched at anyone who went within distance of his reach, and little Ragnhilda lay so alone and cold before the altar in the church. What could she do? What would any mother do at the sudden loss of a child? She left Godwine to persuade her husband out of the dark of the night and into the warmth of the hall. For herself, Emma slipped quietly into the children’s sleeping quarters and huddled with her daughter, Gunnhild, who had sobbed herself to sleep; her mother’s tears were silent, but as many.

September 1023—Cnut Bourne

They are saying,” Godwine said, offering more chicken, “that you are a saint, the chosen of God.”

Cnut took the chicken breast, bit into the succulent white flesh. “Then they are talking fool’s talk,” he responded dourly. “I am a mortal man, no more than are they, whoever ‘they’ might be.”

“Oh, it is all of us, sir!” Ulf piped from down the table. “We think it nothing short of a miracle what you have achieved! To avert a war with words alone? Such a task could not be completed by those as simple-minded as us.”

That Ulf, the proud coxcomb, should think of himself as simple-minded Cnut found hard to believe, but he held his silence.

“It seems, husband,” Emma said, curling her fingers into his and smiling at him with approval, “because you have conquered Thorkell into submission with only your voiced command, the populace are overawed by your power.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” he countered, genuinely bemused. “I have done nothing more than show him my strength and that I will not hesitate to use it. He has used his common sense and submitted to my superiority. Where is the miracle in that?”

“All the same,” Ulf added, “that is what the people are saying.”

Cnut puffed derisory air through his pursed lips. Concentrated on his meal and sat brooding for the rest of the evening.

“They are only meaning to compliment you,” Emma said that night as they lay together. “They are pleased—relieved—there will be no more fighting or bloodshed.”

“But it is not a compliment. Can they not see that? Who am I to compare myself with sainted men? I merely issued threats I know I can follow through with. Where is the saintliness in that?”

Emma snuggled closer to his naked body. “The years of deprivation under Æthelred took their toll, Cnut. We, all of us who suffered, remember his inability to defend and protect. Now here you are, strong and powerful. You send our enemies from us with the ease of snapping your fingers. Is it any wonder the people think of you as almost a god?”

“Oh, enough!” he roared, hurling the bed furs aside and swinging his legs to the floor. He reached for a mantle. “I have more than I can stomach from the fools out there”—he flicked a hand contemptuously in the direction of the door—“without hearing it from you also!”

“You do not hear it from me,” she rebuked. “I am merely attempting to explain how others feel about the peace you have brought.” She shuffled forward, twined her arms around his neck, kissed his cheek, her fingers curling into his red-gold hair. “I am not calling you a god. How can a man who loves the pleasures of his bed have the chastity of a saint?”

He laughed. Enjoyed proving her point.

***

“God’s grief!” Cnut groaned as he peered across the sea-flooded inlet early the next morning. “What are all those people doing over there crowding the wharf at Bosham? Is something amiss, do you think?”

Emma came to stand beside him, shielding her eyes against the dazzle of the morning light. “There are dozens of them! Are they waving? Look, yes…and here comes Godwine in a hurry. What can have happened?” Her first thoughts, as were Cnut’s, being that Thorkell had changed his mind and his ships had been sighted somewhere off the coast. Emma turned towards the sea, expecting to find the striped sails of a Viking fleet edging up the creek.

Godwine himself was rowing a small inshore craft, his lean, muscular arms pulling steadily on the oars as he negotiated the channels; they were deceptive in this inlet, what often appeared to be deep water lying no more than mere inches above treacherous mudbanks. All was safe, provided a man kept an eye on the pig’s-bladder marker buoys.

Cnut and Emma hurried to the jetty. “What is it, Godwine?” Cnut called. “What is amiss? Is it Thorkell?”