The Price of Blood (2 page)

In the Year of our Lord 979 Æthelred, son of Edgar . . . came to the throne . . . His life is said to have been cruel at the outset, pitiable in mid-course, and disgraceful in its ending. . . .

He was hounded by the shade of his brother, demanding terribly the price of blood. Who could count how often he summoned his army, how often he ordered ships to be built, how often he called his nobles together from every quarter, and nothing ever came of it?

The evil could not be lulled to rest . . . for enemies were always sprouting out of Denmark like a hydra’s heads, and nowhere was it possible to take precautions . . .

—The History of the English Kings
William of Malmesbury
Twelfth Century

Prologue

Shrove Tuesday, March 1006

Calne, Wiltshire

Æ
thelred knelt, his head clutched in his hands, bowed beneath the weight of his crown and his sins. Somewhere above, the vesper bells rang to mark the call to evening prayer, and at the very moment of their tolling he felt his limbs tremble, convulsed by a force beyond his control.

The familiar, hated lethargy settled over him, and though he strove to keep his head down and his eyes shut, a will far stronger than his own pulled his gaze upward. The air before him thickened and turned as black and rippling as the windswept surface of a mere. Pain gnawed at his chest, and he shivered with cold and apprehension as the world around him vanished. Sounds, too, faded to nothing and he knew only the cold, the pain, and the flickering darkness before him that stretched and grew into the shape of a man.

Or what had been a man once. Wounds gaped like a dozen mouths at throat and breast, gore streaked the shredded garments crimson, and the menacing face wore Death’s gruesome pallor. His murdered brother’s shade drew toward him, an exhalation from the gates of heaven or the mouth of hell—he could not say which. Not a word passed its lips, but he sensed a malevolence that flowed from the dead to the living, and he shrank back in fear and loathing.

Yet he could not look away. For long moments the vision held him in thrall until, as it began to fade, he became aware of another figure—of a shadow behind the shadow. Dark, indistinct, shrouded in gloom, it hovered briefly in the thickened air and then, like the other, it was gone.

Released from the spell, he could hear once again the pealing of the vesper bells and the murmur of voices at prayer, could smell the honeyed scent of candles and, beneath it, the rank stench of his own sweat. The golden head dropped once more into cupped hands, but now it was heavy with fear and tormented by a terrible foreboding.

A.D. 1006
This year Ælfheah was consecrated Archbishop; Wulfheah and Ufegeat were deprived of sight; Ealdorman Ælfhelm was slain . . .

—The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Chapter One

March 1006

Near Calne, Wiltshire

Q
ueen Emma checked her white mare as it crested a hill above the vast royal estate where the king had settled for the Lenten season. Behind her a company of thirty men, women, and children, all of them heavily cloaked against a biting wind, rested their mounts after the long climb. In front of her, in the middle distance below the hill, the slate roof and high, gilded gables of the king’s great hall dwarfed the buildings and palisade that encircled it. The hall marked their journey’s end, and Emma looked on it with relief, for it was late in the day and her people were weary.

As she studied the road ahead, a single shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds massed in folds across the sky to slant a golden light upon the fields below. The furrowed land shimmered under a thin film of green—new shoots that promised a good harvest in the months to come, if only God would be merciful.

But God, Emma thought, seemed to have turned His face against England. For two years now, promising springs had been followed by rain-plagued summers so that food and fodder were scarce. This past winter, Famine and Death had stalked the land, and if the coming season’s yield was not bountiful, yet more of the poorest in the realm would die.

She had done what she could, distributing alms to those she could reach and adding her voice to the faithful’s desperate pleas for God’s mercy. Now, as the golden light lingered on the green vale below, she prayed that her latest assault on heaven—the pilgrimage she had made to the resting places of England’s most beloved saints—might at last have secured God’s blessings on Æthelred’s realm.

She glanced around, looking past the horse litter that bore her son and his wet nurse to find her three young stepdaughters. Wulfhilde, just eight winters old, was asleep in the arms of the servant who rode with her. Ælfa sat upon her mount slumped within the folds of her mantle. Edyth, the eldest at twelve, stared dully toward the manor hall, her face drawn and pale beneath her fur-lined hood.

Emma chided herself for pushing them so hard, for they had been on the road since daybreak. She turned in her saddle to lead the group forward, but as she did so the wind made a sudden shift to strike her full in the face. Her mount sidled nervously, and as she struggled to control the mare another fierce gust pushed at her like a massive hand that would urge her away.

She felt a curious sense of unease, a pricking at the back of her neck, and she squinted against the wind, searching for the source of her disquiet. On the mast atop the manor’s bell tower, the dragon banner of Wessex heralded the king’s presence within. He would be there to welcome her—although not with anything resembling love or even affection, for he had none of either to give. Æthelred was more king than man—as ruthless and cold as a bird of prey. Sometimes she wondered if he had ever loved anyone—even himself.

She did not relish the coming reunion with her lord, but that alone did not explain her sudden sense of foreboding.

As she hesitated, her son began to wail, his piercing cry an urgent demand that she could not ignore. She shook off her disquiet, for surely it must be her own weariness that assailed her. She nodded to her armed hearth troops to take the lead, and then followed them down the hill.

When she rode through the manor gates she saw a knot of retainers making for the kitchens behind the great hall, one of them carrying the standard of the ætheling Edmund. She puzzled over his presence here while a groom helped her dismount. Edmund had accompanied his elder brothers Athelstan and Ecbert to London in February, charged with the task of repairing the city’s fortifications and the great bridge that straddled the Thames. All three of them were to remain there until they joined the court at Cookham for the Easter feast. What, then, was Edmund doing here today?

The anxiety that had vexed her on the hill returned, but she had duties to perform before she could satisfy her curiosity. She led her stepdaughters and attendants into her quarters, where she found a fire blazing in the central hearth, the lime-washed walls hung with embroidered linens, and her great, curtained bed standing ready at the far end of the room. Three servants were setting up beds for the king’s daughters, and a fourth stepped forward to take Emma’s hooded mantle and muddy boots.

She slipped out of the cloak, then looked about the chamber for the women of her household who had been sent ahead and had, she guessed, supervised all these preparations.

“Where are Margot and Wymarc?” she asked, still unnerved by that moment of unease on the heights above the manor.

Before anyone could respond, Wymarc entered the chamber with a quick step, and Emma, relieved, drew her into an embrace. They had been parted for only a week, yet it seemed far longer. Wymarc was a bright, comforting presence in her household—and had been since the day they left Normandy together for England. Four years ago that was—four years since Emma stood at the door of Canterbury Cathedral as the peace-weaving bride of the English king, with Wymarc looking on from only a half step away.

She had missed Wymarc this past week.

“Margot has taken Robert down to the millpool,” Wymarc said, “to look for ducklings.” She shook her head. “It is a marvel that a woman of her years can keep pace with my young son, yet she does it.”

Emma smiled, imagining Margot, as small and cheerful as a wren, walking hand in hand with a child not quite two winters old. Children, though, had ever been the center of Margot’s world. Healer and midwife, she had been Emma’s guide since birth—and the nearest thing to a mother that Emma had in England.

She glanced at Wulfa and Ælfa, who were already shedding their mud-spattered cyrtels for fresh garments.

“The girls will be glad to see Margot,” she said. “Ælfa took a fall this morning and wants a salve for the cut on her knee. And Edyth”—she nodded toward one of the beds where Æthelred’s eldest daughter was curled up tightly, knees to chest—“yesterday she bled for the first time and she’s feeling wretched, of course, and swears that she’s ill. She’ll listen to no words of reassurance from me, but I expect that Margot can persuade her that she’s not about to die.”

At this the expression in Wymarc’s usually merry brown eyes grew guarded, and the warning glance she cast toward the girls told Emma that something was wrong but that an explanation would have to wait until they could speak privately.

She changed quickly into clean stockings, linen shift, and a dark gray woolen cyrtel, then she drew Wymarc aside.

“What is amiss?” she asked, taking the silken headrail that Wymarc was holding out to her. “Is it something to do with Edmund? I saw his bannermen as I came into the yard.”

“I pray it is not true,” Wymarc whispered, “but there is a rumor that one of the æthelings has died in London.” She clutched Emma’s hand. “Emma, I do not know who it is.”

The headrail slipped, forgotten, from Emma’s fingers. She stared at Wymarc and had to will herself to breathe. Edmund had been with Athelstan and Ecbert in London. Was it possible that one of them was dead?

Holy Mary
, she prayed,
let it not be Athelstan
.

She had been on God’s earth for nineteen summers, had been wife and queen for four of them, and had born a babe who was heir to England’s crown. In all that time she had loved but one man and, God forgive her, that man was not her royal husband but his eldest son.

Clasping her hands together to stop their trembling, she pressed them against her mouth and shut her eyes.

“God have mercy,” she whispered, then looked to Wymarc. “I must go to the king.”

Her thoughts flew back to that moment on the hill above the manor and the foreboding that had shaken her. Had she sensed some trouble in the air then—a portent of loss greater than she could bear to imagine?

Sweet Virgin
, she prayed again,
let it not be Athelstan
.

She took long, slow breaths and walked with a measured step to disguise the fear that clutched at her heart, to try not to think of how wretched the world would be if Athelstan were not in it.

Nodding to the guards at the entrance to the great hall, she slipped inside. Torches flamed in their sockets along the walls and a fire roared in the central pit, but the vast chamber, which should have been busy with preparations for the evening meal, was all but empty. Æthelred sat on the dais in his great chair with Edmund kneeling before him. The king was bent forward, his silver-streaked, tawny hair contrasting with his son’s darker, disheveled locks. The king’s steward, Hubert, stood to one side, dictating something to a scribe; a gaggle of servants hovered nearby looking frightened.

Filled with dread, Emma walked silently and swiftly to the dais and sank into the chair placed beside the king’s. Æthelred did not even mark her entrance, so absorbed was he in what Edmund was saying. Edmund’s face, she saw with despair, was wet with tears, and she forced herself to listen to him in silence, swallowing the urgent query that was on her lips.