The Price of Blood (6 page)

All his raptors had done well today—seven cranes brought down. Clean kills, every one.

As he mounted his horse, one of his retainers gave a shout and pointed to a rider who had just topped a nearby ridge and was moving slowly toward them.

“Someone from Calne,” Æthelred said, “although whatever news he brings does not look to be urgent.”

Soon enough he saw who it was—Eadric of Shrewsbury—another kind of raptor that he had loosed months ago and who was now come back to the lure. What prey, he wondered, had Eadric brought to ground? He had set the young thegn a delicate task, and now he was about to find out if he had been successful.

He gestured to his men to follow at a distance while he spurred his horse toward Eadric. The journey back to the manor would take the better part of an hour, and he and Eadric had much to discuss.

As he drew near to the younger man, he studied Eadric’s handsome, bearded face with its thin, sharp nose and high brow. He’d chosen wisely with this one. Eadric’s dark good looks inspired trust, and he radiated a pleasing charm that worked on women and men alike.

At a glance, no one would guess how very dangerous he was. Eadric, he’d found, was the perfect tool—efficient, reserved, thorough, and, when necessary, casually ruthless.

“I hope you met with success,” he said as Eadric fell in beside him. “Word has reached me recently that Ælfhelm is planning to bestow his daughter upon a Danish warlord. Can you confirm it?”

“Indeed, my lord,” Eadric replied. His eyes, black as a raven’s wing, met Æthelred’s with brutal frankness.

“You’re certain?”

“Aye. For some time now, a man who serves Lord Ælfhelm has been carrying messages back and forth across the Danish sea. It is always the same man and he always takes ship from Gainesborough. That was where I spoke with him but seven days ago.”

“And he told you who is to claim Elgiva and all her lands?”

“He told me what he knew—that she is to wed someone very close to the Danish king.”

Æthelred gnawed on his lower lip. For the right price, a man might admit such a thing even if it were not true. He wanted assurance, beyond any doubt, that Ælfhelm was planning such an alliance. The man’s vague excuse for missing the Easter court because of pressing matters in Mercia rang as false as a whore’s promises of love. Still, he wanted to be sure.

“How can you be certain that he told you the truth?”

“I bartered the life of his wife and her two whelps for the information,” Eadric said. “It took a little bloodletting to get him to speak, but he cooperated eventually. And when, after the first babe was dead and I could get no more out of the vermin but howls, I felt certain that he had told me everything he knew. I had to kill them all, of course, in the end.”

Æthelred grunted. Treachery carried a high price.

“How long, think you, before Ælfhelm’s suspicion is aroused?”

Eadric shrugged. “Some weeks, at least. Anyone who asks after them will be told that they took ship for Denmark and have not returned.”

“Good,” he said. It gave him time to strike before his prey grew wary. “This marriage must not go forward.”

His greatest fear was that, with a Danish warlord at his side and with the support of King Swein, Ælfhelm would grow bold enough to attempt to wrest all the land north of the Humber from English rule. It had happened before. Fifty years ago Eric Bloodaxe had styled himself King of Jorvik, and although the upstart Viking had been driven from his makeshift throne, the memory of that Norse kingdom on English soil was still fresh and alluring in the minds of the men of Northumbria and northern Mercia. How they chafed under the rule of the ancient kings of Wessex!

“Will you bind the lady to someone loyal to yourself instead?” Eadric asked, his eyes alight with interest. “Someone who will stand with you against any Danish assault?”

Bind her! Æthelred allowed himself a grim smile. He would like to bind Elgiva in chains and shut her in some island tower so that he would never have to think on her again. She was like a lodestone that her father was using to draw men of iron into his plots against his king. Even now, in Eadric’s question, he could hear the man’s unspoken yearning to be the one to claim the lady’s hand—and wealth. But to wed the cunning Elgiva to any man with a thirst for power was to create yet another enemy.

He should have wed the girl himself, bound the restless northerners to him with blood ties as he had done with his first marriage. But he had chosen instead to forge an alliance with the Norman duke. He had taken Emma to wife hoping to deprive Danish raiders of the friendly ports that welcomed them along the Narrow Sea within striking distance of England’s coast. He had sealed the alliance by giving Emma a crown and a son—all for naught. His southern shores were still beset by Vikings, while in the north men plotted against him.

“There is no man,” he said at last, “with whom I would trust the Lady Elgiva.” He had a sudden vivid memory of Elgiva’s little bow of a mouth and the things that she could do with it—an agreeable memory, but alarming as well. “She is ambitious and shrewd,” he muttered, “and she would harry her husband until he set all of England at her feet.”

“Then can you not place her in a convent?” Eadric suggested. “Bestow her lands on the nuns at Shaftesbury or Wilton?”

“Her father would never agree to such a fate for his precious daughter. And if any man had a mind to wed her, convent walls would not prevent it. My own father got two children on a nun. No, a vow of chastity and even abbey walls made of stone would not deter a man determined to claim such a prize, and they certainly would not stop a Danish warlord.”

Both men rode in silence for a space, then Æthelred gave voice to the purpose that had been forming in his mind from the moment that he had received Elgiva’s plea for deliverance from a Danish marriage.

“Ælfhelm has become too powerful,” he said. “He has forged a web of conspirators throughout Mercia and into Northumbria. Nay, not a web but a hydra, and I must sever every head if I am to put an end to the plots. Were you able to learn the names of the men who have been a party to this enterprise?”

And for the first time, Eadric disappointed him.

“Forgive me, my lord, but I could not,” he said. “Surely, though, Ælfhelm’s sons must know his plans.”

Æthelred nodded. He would discover what the sons knew when they joined the court at Easter. His more immediate concern was Ælfhelm. He must be dealt with efficiently and—for now—in secret.

“Did you learn aught else from your Gainesborough messenger?”

“He carried nothing in writing. I could only wring from him the words he was meant to deliver to Ælfhelm:
Look to Lammas Day
.”

Lammas Day. August first, when men would be busy with the harvest and reluctant to answer a call to defend villages and fields that were not their own.

Still, it was months away. There was time yet to sever the bond between Ælfhelm and the Danes.

“Ælfhelm has ignored my summons to the Easter council. I would have you make certain that he never attends another one.” He cast a quick glance at Eadric, who was cocking an interested eyebrow. “You are newly come into your inheritance,” he continued, “and Ælfhelm is your ealdorman. Feast him. Flatter him. Invite him to your hall and make sure he brings his daughter with him.”

He glanced again at Eadric’s face, but—as he’d expected—he saw no shadow of hesitation or distaste.

“What of the girl?” Eadric asked.

“Take her, but do not harm her. It was she who warned me of her father’s treachery, and that has earned her some grace. I will have to send her away from England, to Hibernia perhaps, where she is less likely to stir up mischief.”

Although, he thought with a frown, even in Hibernia the lady could be a threat. He would have to give more thought as to how he would provide for Elgiva. The fates of her father and brothers, though, were now sealed. The hydra that threatened him would lose three of its heads, at the least.

Chapter Six

Holy Saturday, April 1006

Cookham, Berkshire

T
he day before Easter was meant to be one of silent reflection and prayer. At least, it was for some, Emma thought as she sat in isolated state beside the king and looked out upon the subdued company that had assembled for the Holy Saturday repast. It was not so for England’s queen, nor for those of her household who must cater to court guests and prepare the great feast that was to be held on the morrow.

Although she would not show it with even the slightest gesture, she was weary from the stresses of the past week: from welcoming the highborn of England to the year’s most important gathering; from pondering an endless string of requests from abbots and bishops who sought her patronage; from answering the multitude of questions posed by attendants, stewards, and slaves; and from the hours of almsgiving on Maundy Thursday and the interminable rituals of Good Friday.

But it was more than exhaustion that made her muscles stiffen and her stomach clench, more even than the hunger brought on by the string of fast days that made up Holy Week.

Beside her, Æthelred sat robed in a mantle of deep blue godwebbe that shimmered in the candlelight like a dragonfly’s wing, but his face was dark with suppressed anger. She could only guess at the source of his displeasure, for he rarely confided in her. Instinctively, though, she felt it must be rooted in fear and so she, too, was fearful.

Æthelred was most dangerous when he was afraid.

The king was a man of dark moods, and she thought she had grown used to them. But this most recent ill humor seemed heavier than any she had yet seen. She had told herself that it was because of Ecbert’s death, still raw in all their minds, especially after yesterday’s mournful Good Friday service, with its vivid reminder of death’s agonies. But although this brooding had begun with Ecbert’s passing, she felt that something else was feeding it, and that the storm brewing within Æthelred could erupt at any time into cataclysm. Anxiety made her neck ache, as if she bore a leaden chain across her shoulders.

Reminding herself that it was fruitless to dwell on something she could not remedy, she turned an appraising eye on the sons of the king, most of whom she had not seen since Christmas. The three youngest had arrived earlier today, boisterous and jocular when they entered the royal apartments until they caught sight of their father’s thunderous face.

Edgar had grown like a wheat stalk in a matter of months. He was thirteen now, and his face had lost the roundness of boyhood. His long hair, pulled straight back from his forehead and bound behind his neck with a woven silver band, had darkened to the color of honey. A sparse beard covered the point of his chin, and that gave him something of the look of Athelstan. He was nearly as comely as his eldest brother, too, with blue eyes that were turned upon the king just now with sober speculation. Not quite a man yet, Edgar, but serious for his age.

Far more serious than the brighter-haired Edwig, who, at fifteen winters, should have been the more responsible one. There was a carelessness about Edwig, though, and she had sometimes glimpsed in him a callous disregard for others that she did not like. He and his elder brother Edrid—the two of them so near in age and looks that they could be taken for twins—served along with Edgar in the retinue of Ealdorman Ælfric, and attended the king only on the high holidays and feasts. Even when they were children she had known them but little.

She watched as Edwig took a stealthy swallow from a leather flask at his belt—some strong liquor, she guessed, forbidden on this holy night, when only watered wine would be served in the king’s hall. Afterward he waved away some protest from his frowning, twinlike brother, Edrid, who was clearly the good angel to Edwig’s bad.

She glanced at the king to see if he had witnessed Edwig’s transgression, but Æthelred’s brooding gaze was fixed upon the two eldest æthelings, Athelstan and Edmund. They stood to one side of the fire pit at the center of the hall, deep in conversation with two men whose faces she could not make out until one of them turned and the firelight flickered on a handsome, chiseled cheek and black, curly hair.

And then she knew them—the sons of Ælfhelm, who had arrived without their sire or their sister, Elgiva. Æthelred would surely read treachery in their absence. Did he know, though, with certainty, of some perfidy that Ælfhelm might be planning? Was that the cause of his foul mood?

“I think, my lord,” she ventured, although she had little hope that he would respond, “that you are troubled by the absence of Elgiva and her father.”

“I am troubled by a great many things, lady,” he replied, his voice laced with sarcasm. “Would you care to have me enumerate them?”

But she refused to respond in kind.

“If it would give you ease, my lord,” she said.

“Nothing will give me ease except death, and I have no desire for that as yet. Not for myself, in any event. What if I were to tell you that I think my sons are consorting with my enemies? What would you say then to give me ease?”

His words chilled her, and she glanced again to where Athelstan was speaking with apparent urgency to the sons of Ælfhelm. She placed her hand upon the king’s arm and said gently, “You judge your sons too harshly, my lord. They are never your enemies.”

There were those, she knew, who would counsel her to speak ill of her stepsons—that as the king’s esteem for them lessened, his regard for her own child must increase. As queen and mother of the heir, they would say, it was her task to put forward her own son and so garner greater status for him and, through him, for herself.

Yet she had no wish to turn Æthelred against the elder æthelings, and that was self-serving, too, in its own way. For she believed that if Æthelred should die while her son was still a child, the witan would place a warrior king upon the throne—someone who could wage war against England’s enemies. It would be Athelstan who would rule the kingdom; Athelstan who would hold her fate—and that of Edward—in his hands.

When that happened, her world would change utterly, and how was she to prepare for it except by cultivating the goodwill of her stepchildren for Edward’s sake? Æthelred’s tally of years was forty winters long now—many years longer than the men of his line who had come before him. And with each year that passed, the tension grew more pronounced between an aging king who could not relinquish one jot of control and the grown sons who were eager for advancement and responsibility—especially Athelstan.