The Price of Blood (5 page)

His eyes widened when he looked at the coins in his hand. She had probably given him too much, but she did not care. If he did as she asked, it was silver well spent.

“I will give him the message, my lady,” he said, quickly slipping the coins into the purse at his belt, as if he feared she might ask for some of them back.

“Can you remember all of it?” she asked.

“I have it here,” he said, tapping a finger to his forehead. “The king will have it in three days’ time; I give you my word.”

He nodded to her, and she stepped back as he mounted his horse. Keeping to the shadows of the stable, she held her breath as she watched him ride toward the manor gate. If the gate wards should stop and question him, he might give her away, however unwittingly. But they waved him through, and she expelled a little sigh of relief. She pressed another coin into the filthy hand of the stable lad and, satisfied that she had disrupted her father’s wretched scheme, she returned swiftly to her chamber.

The matter was in the king’s hands now. He would be furious when he learned what her father was planning, of course—would likely impose a fine or confiscate some of his properties just for considering such a move.

Her brothers would likely suffer the same fate. In truth, she wasn’t certain that her brothers were aware of her father’s plans. But if she had accused them falsely, what did it matter? They had treated her badly for years upon years, and now she would have her revenge.

She wanted all of them punished, but especially her father. For far too long he had kept her from his counsels, had plotted her future with never a thought for her interests and desires. He had treated her like a fool instead of recognizing that she could be of far more use to him if he would but confide in her. She would make him see that she was not without resources, make him regret that he had so badly misjudged both her wit and her willingness to bend to his will.

Chapter Four

March 1006

London

A
procession of heavily laden carts was making its way from the Thames bridge toward the East Ceap. Athelstan nudged his mount past it, grimacing at the noisy clatter of wooden wheels on graveled street. It was just past midday, the sun had burned away the mist that frequently hovered over the river, and London was, as usual, crowded as well as noisy.

And stinking, he thought, as he was forced to wait for another cart, laden with baskets of fish, to turn into the side gate of one of the city’s larger hagas before he could make his way into Æthelingstrete.

A sennight ago, when Ecbert’s coffin had been borne along this route to St. Paul’s Abbey, the streets had been quiet. The ground had been more river than road that day and the air thick with fog and mist, but the men and women who had lined Æthelingstrete to watch the somber procession had stood in silence—a mark of respect for his brother that still moved him.

It had been ten days since Ecbert had died, yet a dozen times on each of those days he had found himself turning to speak to the brother who had been his near constant companion for as long as he could remember—only to discover yet again that Ecbert was not there. He wondered if he would ever become accustomed to that emptiness. Certainly he had tried. He had thrown himself into his work, overseeing the building of a new wooden tower on the London side of the bridge; it exercised his brain and body well enough, but it did little to fill the void that Ecbert had left behind.

He rode beneath the wooden archway that marked the entrance to what the Londoners called the Æthelings’ Haga—usually an apt description, although since Ecbert’s death and Edmund’s immediate departure for Wiltshire, he had been the only ætheling in London. That was apparently no longer the case, he concluded, eyeing the lathered mounts in the yard. Edmund must be back.

He left his horse with a groom and moments later he entered the hall, where he found his brother waiting for him, still cloaked and grimed from travel. Edmund was seated at a table with an ale cup in his hand, and he wore an expression forbidding enough to keep the other men in the hall—slaves, men-at-arms, and trusted companions—at a healthy distance.

Even on a good day, Athelstan knew, Edmund could be forbidding. He had always been burly, but now, at seventeen, he had outstripped all his brothers in height. Athelstan couldn’t even remember the last time he’d won a wrestling match with Edmund. It had been years ago.

Going on looks alone, men took care not to cross Edmund.

The dark, silent one
, their grandmother, the dowager queen, had named him.
They are always the most dangerous. When he speaks, you would do well to listen.

At the moment Edmund was staring into his ale cup as if he could read the fate of the world there and he had just discovered that the world was about to end.

“You look like hell,” Athelstan said, sitting down opposite his brother. And no wonder, considering the tidings he had borne to the king. “How bad was it?”

Edmund took a long pull from his cup, then set it down and stared at it morosely.

“He wanted to know every detail,” he said heavily, “so I had to relive it in the telling.” He took a breath and ran a hand through the thick brown hair that set him apart from his Saxon-fair brothers. “One can’t blame him, I suppose, for wanting to make certain that all had been done for Ecbert that could have been.” He drained his cup, then pushed it away from him. “
She
came in while I was answering his questions. Hung on every word. Pretended to grieve for Ecbert. As if anyone would believe that she would mourn the death of one who might have stood between her son and the throne.” He scowled at Athelstan. “I am mistaken,” he corrected himself. “You would believe it.”

“Leave off, Edmund,” he said wearily.

Emma had ever been a sore point between them. To Edmund she was not a living, breathing woman but a tool of her ambitious brother, the Norman duke Richard, and so a threat to all the sons of the king’s first marriage. And as for
him—
but he thrust the thought of Emma away from him. She was on his mind far too often as it was.

“Was the king satisfied that we had done all we could to save Ecbert?”
Had
they done all that they could to save their brother? The question had been nagging at him like a toothache and would not go away.

“Do you mean does the king blame you for Ecbert’s death?”

Edmund’s penetrating eyes probed his own, and Athelstan admitted to himself that this was exactly what he’d meant. As the eldest ætheling he had always shouldered responsibility for his brothers’ welfare, at least when they were together. He had also been burdened with most of the blame whenever their father found fault with them.

He made no reply, though, and Edmund shook his head.

“Ecbert’s illness and death were no fault of yours, Athelstan, and the king knows that. When will you allow yourself to believe it?”

“I keep asking myself if there was something more—”

“The answer is no,” Edmund said. “He was treated, he was blessed, he was shriven, and he has gone to God. Now you must let him go.” He leaned across the table and his dark eyes were insistent. “You cannot bring him back.”

Athelstan rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. Edmund was right. He could not bring Ecbert back from death; could not change his wyrd. Yet since Ecbert had died, he had been unable to rid his mind of words that he had long tried to forget.

A bitter road lies before the sons of Æthelred—all but one.

That prophecy had been uttered two years before, within the shadow of a pagan stone dance by one who was said to be able to read the future. They were dismal words that he had repeated to no one. Why tell others a thing that he wished he had never heard himself? Even if he had shared the prophecy with Ecbert, it would not have changed anything; nor would it change Edmund’s fate, whatever it might be, if he were to speak of it now.

So he remained silent, and when he looked again at his brother he saw that there must be something more on Edmund’s mind, for he was tapping his fingers nervously against his empty cup while he chewed on his lower lip. When Edmund did not speak, Athelstan prodded him. “What are you not telling me?”

“It’s just that . . .” Edmund frowned, glanced away, then seemed to make up his mind about whatever was troubling him. “Ecbert’s death did not surprise the king. He already knew. When I entered the hall he looked up at me and nodded, as if he had been waiting for me. Before I said a single word he asked,
Which of my sons is dead?
Not sick or injured, but dead. He knew. I have been trying to explain it to myself all during the long journey back, but I cannot make sense of it. How could he have known?”

Edmund’s question hung in the air between them, and Athelstan was uncertain how best to answer it. Not with the truth, for the king had forbidden him to speak it.

The king is troubled in his mind.

It was Archbishop Ælfheah who had first alerted him to his father’s secret torment. And then he had witnessed it himself—had seen the king cower, gray-faced with horror from some invisible threat. Afterward, when his father was himself again, he had spoken of seeing signs and portents of disaster.

Had he, then, been given some warning of the death of a son?

Jesu.
He did not want to believe it, did not even wish to discuss it with Edmund. To do so was to tread perilously close to what he had been forbidden to reveal.

“For fifteen years,” he said, “the kingdom has suffered one blow after another. Viking raids, lost battles, murrains, flooding, famine—it is no wonder that the king looks for calamities. And rumor, as you know, travels on the wind.”

Edmund gave him a dubious look.

“Aye,” he said slowly. “Rumor. That may explain it.” Then his face took on the shuttered expression that hid what he really thought.

Edmund would let it go for now, and Athelstan hoped that there would never be reason to speak of it again.

“While we’re on the subject of tale-telling, then,” his brother went on, “you should know that Archbishop Wulfstan arrived while I was at Calne. He bent the king’s ear for the space of a long meal, and whatever news he brought from the north, the king did not like it.”

That was no surprise. When their mother had died, the northern links that their father had forged through that marriage had been broken, and no measures had been taken to restore them. The northerners felt far more loyalty to one another than to a distant king who all but ignored them.

“There may be rebellion stirring among the Mercians and Northumbrians,” he said, “and Ealdorman Ælfhelm is likely up to his neck in it. The northerners’ allegiance to the king is no stronger than a chain made of straw.” And what would his father do to stem that unrest? Another massacre, like the one on St. Brice’s Day three years before, when so many Danes in England had been put to the sword?

“If our father had taken Ælfhelm’s daughter to wife instead of Emma,” Edmund growled, “there would be no trouble in the north. We need a more binding alliance with Ælfhelm or with one of the other northern lords to keep them loyal to us rather than to their Danish brethren across the sea. It should have been forged long ago.”

“A marriage, you mean.”

“
Your
marriage,” Edmund said, “to Ælfhelm’s scheming daughter, yes. It’s what the girl and her father have wanted since before you could grow a beard and not, as you know, because of your comely face and bright blue eyes.”

Edmund was right about that. Elgiva, she-wolf that she was, had tried to worm her way into his bed for political gain—drawn to his status as heir to the throne. When that had failed she had opened her legs for the king instead, who used her as any king would. Despite that, he would take her to wife if it would ease the situation in the north—and if there was a chance that the king would approve. Which there was not.

“The king,” he said, “will never allow it.”

“Then you must do it without his permission.”

“Sweet Christ,”
he muttered. “You know how the king would regard that. He would think that I was making a bid for his crown. I might gain the allegiance of the northern lords, but the king would see it as the blackest treachery. It would rip the kingdom in two.”

“Then you must reason with him. Convince him of the necessity of a marriage alliance with Ælfhelm’s daughter!”

“And you think he would listen to me?” Athelstan barked a bitter laugh. “When has he ever heeded any counsel that I have offered? For twenty years he has followed no one’s counsel but his own, and I have not the art to frame my words in a way that would convince him that they sprang from his own mind.”

“You have to try, Athelstan,” Edmund insisted. “
We
have to try, and we won’t be without support, I promise you. Ælfmær in the west and Wulfnoth in Sussex would welcome it. Most of the southern nobles would understand the necessity of such a move. At the very least, let us broach to Ælfhelm’s sons the idea of a marriage, and see what kind of response we get. We will have wagered nothing.”

He could guess the likely outcome of that. If his father heard of it, he would deem it a conspiracy led by his two eldest sons. The king already mistrusted him; this could only add to his suspicions.

Yet Edmund was right. Something must be done to prevent Ælfhelm from stirring up trouble in the north. Despite the king’s wrath, for the sake of the kingdom he and Edmund would have to take the risk and raise the possibility of a marriage. He did not see that they had a choice.

Chapter Five

March 1006

Calne, Wiltshire

T
he springtime sun was westering when Æthelred, satisfied with the day’s sport, beckoned his falconer. Before transferring his prize gyrfalcon from his own leather-clad arm to the keeper’s, he spoke a few soft words to the bird. The hawking season was nearly done, and this one had earned his summer’s rest.