Читать книгу The Emma of Normandy 2-book Collection: Shadow on the Crown and The Price of Blood - Patricia Bracewell - Страница 20

Athelstan, Ecbert, and Edmund rode at the head of a small company of men along a track that wound through a snow-smothered landscape. Above them thin white clouds driven by a light breeze streaked the sky. For two weeks the æthelings had been awaiting the arrival of Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria, at the royal estate near Saltford, the men restive and chafing under the enforced inactivity brought on by repeated bouts of foul weather. In that time the æthelings had received no further word from either the ealdorman or the king, and Athelstan felt as if they had been abandoned, awaiting word of their father’s pleasure. He wondered what was in the king’s mind to keep his eldest sons distant at such a time.

It had not concerned him that news of their mother’s death had reached them only after she had been laid to rest, for he understood that the deadly Christmastime storm had made it impossible for a messenger to make it through any sooner. He and his brothers had mourned her in their own way, yet her loss had touched them almost not at all. Although she had borne eleven children she had tended none of them in their infancy or their youth. Her impact upon her sons and daughters had been of no greater weight than that made by a single snowflake when it touches the earth. She had been but a shadow in their lives, almost invisible in the far larger shadow cast by their father, the king.

Now, though, Athelstan found it worrisome that Ealdorman Ælfhelm and the other great lords of the land remained with the king in Winchester while the eldest æthelings had not been summoned. What matters of moment were being discussed among the king’s counsellors?

What secrets was their father keeping from his sons?

‘He will marry again,’ Edmund had said flatly, when they had discussed it among themselves.

Ecbert had guffawed in disbelief, but Athelstan was inclined to agree with Edmund. Their father was not a young man, but he was vigorous and hale, and his carnal appetites were an open secret among the nobles of his court. The bishops, certainly, would urge him to marry.

Such a step could have momentous consequences for the æthelings, and the fact that Athelstan and his brothers were not privy to their father’s deliberations gnawed like a canker. Even as he turned his face up to the pale light of the winter sun, Athelstan’s thoughts were as cold as the wind that blew at their backs.

He urged his horse up a gentle rise, towards an ancient stone that stood black against the sky. It marked the final leg of this morning’s quest, a journey that had been suggested by Ecbert, half in seriousness and half in jest. He had heard tell of a crone living alone in a fold of the hills, a wisewoman who could read events far in the future.

‘We should seek her out,’ he had urged last night, as he faced Edmund across the tafl board, deliberating his next move. ‘She might tell us something to our advantage.’

Athelstan and Edmund had both scoffed at their brother’s suggestion, but Ecbert had persisted.

‘The local folk swear that she has the Sight,’ he insisted. ‘Even the prior from the abbey hereabouts has been known to visit her cottage.’

‘Probably to persuade her to leave her pagan ways,’ Athelstan said drily, from where he sat watching their play.

‘They say that she knows things,’ Ecbert persisted, ‘that she can decipher men’s hearts.’

‘You might want to ask her for advice on how to win at tafl,’ Edmund said, making a move that captured Ecbert’s king and ended the game. ‘That is your third loss, man. You are utterly hopeless tonight.’

The normally genial Ecbert threw up his hands in frustration.

‘I am bored, Edmund! I am fed up with waiting here like a kennelled dog. If the weather is fine tomorrow, I shall ride out to consult the old woman. Athelstan, will you come with me? Who knows? She may be able to tell us what is in the mind of the king.’

Athelstan thought that unlikely. Nevertheless, the journey, at least, might not be such a bad idea. He glanced around the hall, where men clustered in small groups over games of dice or nodded over cups of ale. They were all of them bored and not a few of them surly. They would be at each other’s throats soon if he did not find something to occupy them.

He nodded briskly to Ecbert.

‘It can do no harm,’ he said, ‘and the men and horses will benefit from the exercise, fair weather or no.’

And so they had set out mid-morning, following landmarks that a local man pointed out as he led the way – a tree blasted by lightning, an abandoned mill, an ancient mound that the folk thereabouts called the Devil’s Barrow. They had arrived at last at a long, low ridge where the snow lay less thick than it did on the surrounding countryside, and where the standing stone, its edges scored in primitive runes, pointed skyward.

Athelstan checked his horse beside the ancient, lichen-covered stone. Gazing into the shallow vale beyond, he caught his breath at what he saw: a circle of what he guessed must be a hundred standing stones, each one the height of a man or a little more, mushroomed from the valley floor. Like monstrous, deformed fingers, black against the blanket of snow, the stones cast long shadows that speared, ominously, straight at him.

They might not be as massive as the giants on Sarum’s plain, he thought, but there were far more of them, and they had the same menacing power. He did not like it, and he felt his gut begin to churn.

Ecbert and Edmund came up beside him, and he watched their faces as they surveyed the scene before them. From their stricken expressions it was clear that they were having second thoughts about this venture – as was he. There were enough dark things in this world. One needn’t seek them out.

‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked Ecbert.

‘No,’ Ecbert muttered, ‘but it would be stupid to turn back now.’ He flicked a glance at Athelstan. ‘You go first, though.’

Athelstan scowled at him, then peered into the valley again, looking for signs of life. The stone circle was fringed by moss-bearded oaks, and on its far side he could see a small croft sheltering among the trees, its thatching frosted with snow. He realized with a shock that what he had taken for another stone, standing in the gloom near the hut, was a living figure staring back at him.

She had been waiting for them, then. He was certain of it, although he could not say how he knew. There was something else he was certain of as well, and it added to his anxiety. He was meant to go down there. Ecbert was right. There was no turning back now.

He led the way down into the grove, threading his horse through the trees towards the croft, purposely avoiding the clearing and its hulking, glowering stones. As they neared the cottage he saw that the figure waiting there was swathed in layers of coarse, black wool, her head covered by the folds of a shawl so thick that the old woman’s face, if it was a woman, was all but invisible.

‘God be with you, my lord,’ she called.

The voice was surprisingly deep and harsh – roughened, Athelstan guessed, by wood smoke and disuse. He dismounted and went towards her, Ecbert and Edmund trailing behind him.

‘God be with you, mother,’ he said. ‘It must be hard faring for you this winter, living so far from your neighbours as you do. Will you accept a small gift, some supplies to replenish your larder against lean times?’ He gestured to one of his men, who placed a large sack filled with cheese, bread, and pulses beside the hut and then hastened back to his mount.

The eyes watching Athelstan showed neither surprise nor gratitude.

‘What would you have of me?’ she asked. ‘You have come far from your appointed road, for you are bound north, I think. The herepath lies that way.’

She gestured to the west, where the old road built by the Roman legions, the Fosse Way, ran from Exeter in the southwest to Jorvik in the north. Presumably, whenever Ealdorman Ælfhelm arrived to lead them to Northumbria, they would, indeed, follow that same northward road.

Still, Athelstan reassured himself, it did not take second sight to hazard that a group of armed men wearing the badge of the ealdorman of Northumbria would likely be headed that way.

‘Perhaps you have already given me what I seek,’ he said, ‘if you can predict nothing more for me than a road that leads north. But it is my brother here,’ he motioned to Ecbert, ‘who wishes to consult you.’

She peered up at him then, and he saw the gleam of shrewd eyes from within the folds of her shawl.

‘Nay, lord,’ she said, shaking her head slowly. ‘You are the one who has need of guidance. Will you give me your hand?’

He hesitated, brushed by a whisper of foreboding. The knowing eyes fixed on his, though, flashed a challenge that he could not ignore, and he placed his hand within her outstretched palms. Her fingers felt thin and clawlike, as roughened and calloused as his own.

She peered at his palm, and for some time she was silent while Athelstan’s disquiet grew. The standing stone on the ridge, the menacing stone circle, the skeletal touch of the old woman’s hands – all of it was forbidden, pagan magic. He felt a wild urge to flee, but in the next moment she spoke, and in a voice far different from the one with which she had greeted him. Now it was vibrant, full and feminine. The timbre of it pulsed through him in the same way that a tolling bell vibrates through the blood.

‘There is great strength in this hand,’ she proclaimed, loud enough for all his men to hear, ‘strength enough to wield even the great Sword of Offa.’

Next to him he felt Edmund give a sudden start of surprise, and he could guess what his brother was thinking, for the words struck him, too, with a force as sharp as a blow. Offa’s Sword, once wielded by that legendary Saxon king, even now hung on the wall behind their father’s chair in the great hall at Winchester. By tradition it was bestowed by the ruling king upon his designated heir. It had not yet been promised to Athelstan, but he expected that one day it would be his.

Yet how had this woman guessed that she spoke to the eldest son of the king? Had word reached her somehow that the æthelings were at Saltford? Possibly. Possibly this was all an act, but if so, to what end?

Now the woman curled his fingers into his palm and leaned close to him.

‘Sword you may wield,’ she said, so softly that only he could hear her, ‘yet the sceptre will remain beyond your reach.’

It took him a moment to grasp the import of her words, and by then she was already turning away to enter her croft. Quickly he covered the space between them, caught her arm, and held her.

‘Who will take the sceptre, then, when the time comes?’ he hissed softly. ‘Who will wear the crown?’

She turned, and for a long moment she looked past him, at each of his brothers in turn, until at last she faced Athelstan again and slowly shook her head.

‘There is a shadow on the crown, my lord,’ she murmured, ‘and my Sight cannot pierce the darkness. You must be content with the knowledge you have been given, for I can say no more.’

No, of course she would say no more, he thought. She was wily, this one, toying with her supplicants as skilfully as a practised harlot so that they sought her out again and again. Yet she could have no real power, not unless one granted it to her. And he would not journey down that dark road.

He released her with a curt nod.

‘Go with God then, mother.’

She turned away from him, and he followed her with his eyes until the dark maw of her croft swallowed her.

Ecbert had already mounted his horse, but Edmund was waiting for him, studying him with dark, speculative eyes.

‘What did she say to you, there at the end?’ he asked. ‘What did she say about us?’

‘Nothing of import,’ Athelstan replied gruffly. ‘You did not really expect anything, did you? She is nothing but a fraud, Edmund.’

He mounted his horse and made for the ridge top, but in spite of what he had said to his brother, his thoughts ran on the old woman’s words. Her prediction about Offa’s Sword was no more than he already knew. He had been born the eldest son of one of the richest kings in Christendom, and Offa’s Sword was his due.

As for the rest of it, if there was any truth in the future that she bespoke him – that he would never be England’s king – then he must find a way to change his destiny.