Читать книгу The Emma of Normandy 2-book Collection: Shadow on the Crown and The Price of Blood - Patricia Bracewell - Страница 31

November was the blood month, the slaughter time, when stock were culled, butchered, and dressed in preparation for the lean days of the winter to come. In Winchester the short days turned cold and wet, but Emma took little note of the weather. She left the palace only to attend services in one of the two great churches nearby, always escorted by members of the king’s hearth guards, for her Norman people had been sent away, scattered to her various properties across Wessex and Mercia. Hugh was gone to Exeter, and Emma missed him most of all, for he had given her good counsel about the management of her estates. Wymarc, she guessed, missed him even more, although she did her best to hide it.

‘I could send you to Exeter as well, if you wish it,’ Emma had offered several days before Hugh and his men had departed. She had seen the affection that had grown between Wymarc and Hugh, and although her heart was heavy at the thought of losing her friend, she had no wish to deny her the happiness that her queen would never have.

‘Of what use would I be to you in Exeter?’ Wymarc had demanded. ‘My place is at your side, my lady, not in some fortress at the kingdom’s edge. And if you are thinking I’ve a mind to follow Hugh, well, it will do him no harm to discover how dismal the world can be with only English women in it.’

Yet when Hugh took his leave of Emma, Wymarc had followed him from the chamber, and when she returned her eyes were bright with tears, and she had the rumpled look of a woman who had just been well and thoroughly kissed.

On the morning of 13th November, the Feast of St Brice, Emma’s English attendants clustered in her chamber in small groups like flocks of brightly coloured birds. Emma sat to one side with Wymarc, Margot, and Father Martin – all that remained of her Norman retinue. They were eagerly sifting through a packet that had arrived from Rouen with news of the forthcoming marriage of Emma’s sister Mathilde to a Frankish count. A letter from Emma’s mother provided details, but Emma was disappointed to find no message from her sister.

Mathilde, she thought, still harboured resentment that she had not been the one sent to wed a king. She could have wept at the cruel irony of it, but weeping was for later, when she lay alone in her cold bed and recalled the nights she had shared with her sister in their chamber at Fécamp.

Father Martin began to read aloud what amounted to a sermon from her brother the archbishop, regarding a woman’s duty to her husband, and Emma was relieved when he was interrupted by a servant bearing news, until she heard what he had to say. A nameless Dane had been put to death that morning for crimes against the king.

She knew what the prisoner’s crime had been, and that his life had been forfeit for raising his hand against the king. There was wild speculation, though, among the ladies of her chamber about the execution.

Emma tried to ignore the threads of conjecture the women spun. None of them could know for certain what he had done or how close the poor mad wretch had come to murdering the king or his son.

She caught sight of Elgiva then, who was looking at her with an arch, insolent gaze. Elgiva, at least, did know what had happened that day in the minster square. Indeed, she must know a great many things, for Elgiva was sleeping with the king.

It was the greatest open secret within the court – that, and the fact that Æthelred had not visited the queen’s bed for many weeks.

The tiny flicker of fear that always burned within her flared brighter as she considered the problem of the Lady of Northampton.

If the king’s attentions to Elgiva continued to keep him from Emma’s bed, she would never conceive a child. That would matter little to Æthelred. He had sons enough; duty did not compel him to seek his wife’s embrace. Emma was the one who needed a son to guarantee her status within the court and to protect her should the king die.

And kings did die. Rulers sickened and died for no obvious reason. It had happened to her own father. It had happened to Æthelred’s father, as well, when he was younger than Æthelred was now.

Over the past weeks, stripped of her Norman protectors, Emma had come to realize how precarious her position really was. She had not heeded her mother’s advice. Use your youth and your beauty to garner the king’s favour, Gunnora had told her. Yet she had not merely lost the battle for the king’s favour, she had vacated the field before the battle began. The king had pushed her away, and she had gone willingly. Now it may already be too late. If she were branded as barren not even her status as queen would protect her. She would be locked away in some abbey, a bitter and disgraced bride trusting to her brother for her support.

The king no longer sought her bed. When she had first wed him she had at least been an unknown commodity, a mystery for him to unravel. Now he had become accustomed to her, and he had found her wanting where Elgiva was not.

She must find a way to entice Æthelred to her bed, no matter how distasteful the prospect. Yet she had not the least idea how to go about it.

The next day it was Father Martin who entered the queen’s apartment with news. Emma and her women were seated around a frame that held a length of linen upon which a motif of flowers and vines had been drawn in lampblack. Gradually their busy fingers were transforming the black into vivid, silken colours.

It was well past midday, and the light was fading when Emma saw the priest hesitating in the doorway. She smiled up at him, but her greeting died in her throat when she saw the agitated look on his face.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘News is coming in from all across the land of a great killing,’ he said, his voice taut with shock and his face stricken. ‘A massacre of Danes, at the king’s command.’

‘A massacre?’ Every tongue in the chamber had stilled, and Emma’s words seemed to echo in the silence.

‘Men, women, and children put to the sword,’ the priest said. ‘Merchants dragged from their businesses, farmers and wives taken from their homes, and all of them butchered. A monk from Oxford has brought a wretched tale of folk who sought sanctuary within a church only to have the doors chained shut and the church burned over their heads by a crowd mad with bloodlust. There were over fifty folk killed in Oxford alone, may God grant them rest.’

Beside Emma, Elgiva spoke up even as she continued to pierce the linen with her needle.

‘They were the devil’s spawn,’ she said placidly, ‘and the enemies of the king. They would have murdered us in our beds if given the chance. The king was wise to strike those foes that live amongst us, before they can cause us harm.’

Emma had dropped her needle and clasped her hands as the images of burning mothers and children filled her mind, and now she turned outraged eyes on Elgiva.

‘What is it,’ she asked coldly, ‘that makes them our foes? Rumour? Envy? Strange customs? A different language? What is it that they have done to deserve such a horrible death?’

‘They attacked the king on his feast day,’ Elgiva said. ‘The Dane who was executed yesterday tried to murder the king. It is his confederates who have been put to the sword, to prevent them from bringing an army against us.’

Emma heard again the mad howl that had promised death and destruction. But it had come from the mouth of a single man with a broken, twisted mind, one more to be pitied than feared.

‘There was never any proof of an army,’ she said.

‘The king has no need of proof. You have not lived among us long enough, my lady, to understand the danger that the Danes are to us.’ And now her eyes met Emma’s boldly. ‘We must be wary of them, for they are strangers among us.’

Just as you are a stranger among us. The words remained unspoken, but Emma felt their force and their threat just the same.

She sat up late that night, disturbed by the day’s news and by the lack of Christian compassion that she had witnessed within her own household. She had sent word to the king that she was ill and had taken her supper in her chamber, for she did not think that she could bear to listen to the kind of discourse that was likely to go on at Æthelred’s table. By day’s end the murder of the Danes, even of innocent women and children, was being hailed as a great victory. Any who thought otherwise kept their thoughts to themselves.

She was seated with only Wymarc to attend her when the king strode into the chamber. He had apparently come straight from the feast hall, for he was garbed in a short tunic of rich scarlet wool, belted in gold, and with gold rings on his arms and thick, gold chains about his neck.

‘Leave us,’ he said to Wymarc, who, with a long backwards glance at Emma, left the room.

When they were alone, Æthelred helped himself to a cup of wine. Emma, watching his unsteady hand as he poured, thought that he must have had a great deal to drink already.

‘You are up late, my lady,’ he said.

‘I am unwell and cannot sleep.’

‘Since you are wakeful,’ he said, ‘then it is well that I have come to keep you company, is it not?’

She gazed at him and remained stubbornly silent. She should welcome him to her bed, for that was the duty she owed to her husband, lord, and king. She owed it to herself, for she had a desperate need to bear a child. Yet she could not do it. She could not rid her mind of the images of burning children, and it was all she could do to keep her anger and loathing from showing in her face.

Æthelred studied his lady wife in the candle glow. Seated in her cushioned chair she looked every inch the queen. Even garbed in just her nightdress she carried herself with a regal air in spite of her youth. The soft, thick shawl of fine-spun black wool that she had flung about her shoulders set off the whiteness of her skin. Her hair, loosened from its modest day-time braid, hung about her in soft waves that fell like a milky stream into her lap.

In the six months since their nuptials he had formed no particular fondness for her, but he felt an enormous pride in owning something so exquisitely beautiful.

Emma, though, did not fully appreciate her own good fortune at having been chosen as his queen. There was something lacking in her expression whenever she looked at him. Even now she regarded him with distaste, as if the daughter of an upstart duke considered herself better than an English king. He had thought to bend her allegiance to him by sending her people away, but still she kept herself apart. When she looked at him her glance was cold, with no glint of gratitude or approval. Christ, it galled him.

He tossed back a mouthful of wine and sat down on her vast, curtained bed.

‘It was unwise of you to absent yourself from the hall tonight, lady,’ he said, ‘for it was your duty as queen to be there. Surely you are aware that the Danish tide that would have engulfed us has been checked. God has made me the instrument of His Divine Will, and I have saved all of us, even you, from a terrible danger. Your voice should have been raised with all the others in prayers of thanksgiving. Yet you seem unmoved.’

‘Indeed, my lord, you wrong me,’ she said.

He raised an eyebrow at her, awaiting her excuse.

‘How could one not be moved,’ she went on, ‘by the slaughter of innocents?’

Good Christ. The girl was either mad or a fool to speak so to him.

‘Innocents? Is that how you name them? A barbarous people with no regard for life or property? Folk who burn, pillage, murder, and rape, and who would teach their children to do the same? You would fear them if you had seen the destruction that they have wrought upon our towns and villages.’

Her eyes flashed at him now, and her mouth twisted in scorn.

‘And with this act, have you not unleashed death and destruction upon your people? The church of St Frideswide in Oxford should have been a place of sanctuary, yet it became a funeral pyre for women and children upon your order. If you fear the Danes so much, then you must fear me as well. My mother is a Dane, a barbarian as you say. Do you not tremble that I might slay all your children in their beds? I have heard it said that English princes have some cause to fear their stepmothers.’

As soon as the words left her mouth Emma knew that she had gone too far. The king’s anger towards her had been smouldering from the moment he entered the room, and now she had fanned the flames into fury. She knew, instinctively, that she should run, but she had nowhere to go. In an instant he had dashed his cup to the floor and covered the distance between them with a single step. He slapped her hard across the face, and before she could recover from the blow, he had grasped her roughly and pulled her to her feet.

‘Do you threaten my children, you Norman bitch?’ He shook her, and for the first time in her life she was afraid of what a man might do to her.

‘My lord, I do not!’ she gasped through rattling teeth. ‘I meant only to remind you that you have many folk in your realm, and not all of them are English.’ She tried to calm her voice, to speak with the gravity of a priest or a councillor. ‘If you hold all the Danes in your kingdom responsible for the actions of one man, my lord, then you do them a grave injustice. My blood, too, is Danish, yet I am loyal to my king. Surely I am not alone in this?’

She looked into his eyes, and her stomach twisted with fear as she realized that he was too far gone in drink to listen to reason.

‘I know your blood well enough, bitch,’ he snarled at her. ‘Best you be wary of mine. If you do not fear the Danes, then I suggest you cultivate some fear of me!’ He shook her again, but although Emma writhed in his grasp, she could not get away from him. ‘I bought and paid for you with English gold, and I have yet to see any decent return for my money, not even the seed of a half Norman brat taking root in your belly. Perhaps I have been at fault, treating you too gently. Mayhap you prefer more barbarous treatment, in keeping with your ancestry.’

‘No, my …’ she began, but he cuffed her again.

Dazed by the force of this second blow, she barely struggled as he wrestled her to the bed. When he threw her roughly to the mattress she tried to curl herself into a ball, but he used his knee to trap her legs. One of his hands sprawled against her face, stifling her scream and pushing her head down hard against the bedding. With his other hand he grasped the skirt of her gown, rucking it up to bare her legs and thighs, and she knew then what he would do. She felt his weight on top of her, driving the air from her lungs so that she had to struggle to breathe against the hand that covered her nose and mouth. She arched her back, trying to ease the agonizing pressure on her scalp from the tug of her long hair, trapped beneath the weight of their two bodies.

She pushed against his chest with her hands, clawing at him, desperate for air. But Æthelred had been wielding a sword since he was a child. His arms were strong, and her fists had no effect on him. Panicking, she feared that she must suffocate there underneath his weight, until finally he raised himself above her and she was able to snatch a breath. She used it to scream as he brutally thrust himself inside her over and over.

When he was done he collapsed on top of her once more, but he’d moved his hand from her face, and she opened her mouth on a sob to draw in a lungful of blessed air. He roused himself at that, grasping her head with both hands, holding her down as he covered her mouth with his and thrust his tongue inside her, robbing her of breath once more and making her panic swell again. He ground his mouth against hers, using his teeth to score her lips before lifting his head. When she looked at his face, only inches from hers, she saw her blood on his mouth.

‘I should have done that from the first,’ he said, ‘marked you as my property. You are not a Dane, lady, nor even a Norman any more. You have my English seed inside you, and that makes you an English woman and nothing else. Never forget it again.’

He stood up then, and she turned onto her side, crawling up further onto the bed and pulling her knees up to her chest. She did not see him leave.

News of the massacre on the Feast of St Brice reached Athelstan as he was hunting in Hwicce Wood. He listened to the lurid reports in disbelief, then immediately set out for Oxford with a small company to discover what truth lay behind the grisly tales.

They approached the settlement of Pallig and Gunhild late in the afternoon of a mid-November day, accompanied by a dismal, steady rain. The outer palisade stood deserted, the gate yawned wide, and a rank stench filled the air. In the centre of the compound, a gruesome pile of charred human remains, slick and wet from the rain, lay open to the sky. Beyond it, the great wooden hall and its outbuildings stood whole and intact, but devoid of any signs of life.

Athelstan dismounted, skirted the gory remains of the pyre, and went into the hall. The place had been stripped to the walls. All the furniture, the hangings – everything was gone. The hard-packed dirt floor had been dug up in several places in search, he guessed, of any hoard that may have been hidden there.

Setting his men the task of burying the remains in the dooryard, Athelstan made his way into Oxford town itself. He passed the burned-out hulk of St Frideswide’s church but did not stop to inspect it. He had seen enough to confirm the grim rumours. What he wanted to know was if anyone had escaped the king’s wrath. He wanted to discover what had happened to Pallig’s wife and infant son.

He found the shire reeve in the local tithe barn overseeing the sorting of clothing, furniture, cooking pots and utensils, tools, even armour and weapons. Athelstan could guess where it had all come from – confiscated from the poor wretches who had been slaughtered at the king’s command. The administrative arm of his father’s kingdom worked as efficiently as one could wish. These items would be catalogued and sold among the locals, with most of the proceeds going to the king. Nothing would be destroyed or wasted. Except lives.

His interview with the reeve was brief. The man assured him that he had fulfilled the king’s command, and that no one had escaped the king’s justice.

‘We struck before dawn with over a hundred men,’ he said. ‘They had watchers at the gate, but we got to ’em before they could raise the alarm. Caught ’em sleepin’, mostly, although that whoreson Pallig put up the devil of a fight before we gutted him. His woman was no easy mark, either. She could sling an axe like a woodsman, that one. Used it to try to keep us from that cub of hers. Murdered two of my men, for all the good it did her.’ He grinned and winked, then inclined his head in the direction of St Frideswide’s. ‘The ones in the church were townsmen, living among us as if they belonged here. Filthy Danes.’ He turned and spat. ‘They thought the priest might save ’em, but he was with us. We had a goodly crowd by then, and Father Osbern himself set the thatch alight. The good Lord gave us a fair sky and, oh, it was a mighty burning!’ He gave a nod of satisfaction. ‘I reckon it was a good day’s work, St Brice’s was.’

Athelstan cursed as he turned away. Good work, indeed. The men of Oxford had followed the king’s orders to the letter. As for the rest of the country, even the king would likely never learn how many hundreds had been murdered and how many had managed to escape the sword, for surely not every Dane had been butchered. And just as surely, Athelstan knew, someone would carry word of the massacre to Swein Forkbeard and tell him that his sister and her son were among the Danish dead.

There would be a price to pay for the slaughter of St Brice’s Day. Blood would beget blood, and Swein would not let this outrage go unanswered.

By the time Athelstan made it back to Winchester two days later he had heard many more reports of killings that had been carried out in London, Warwick, and Shrewsbury. With each new account his anger increased. Ignoring courtly protocol he strode directly into his father’s inner chamber and slammed both hands on the table before the king.

‘Why did you do it?’ he demanded. ‘What possessed you to put so many innocents to the sword?’

His father looked up, pursed his lips, and with a flick of his hand dismissed his steward and the clerk who had been scribbling away at a table nearby. Sitting back in his great chair, the king folded his arms in front of him and gazed darkly upon his son.

Athelstan, watching his father, thought that he looked like the very picture of God that was in the psalter given to him by his grandmother. There he sat, the Lord of Judgement, granting redemption or damnation as he saw fit.

‘The Dane who threatened me,’ Æthelred said slowly, ‘claimed that he was part of an army. You heard him. You spoke with him yourself.’

‘Yes, I spoke with him! He was mad! He raved! There was no army!’

‘There is no army now.’ Æthelred’s voice was calm. ‘My reeves have seen to that. They put only armed men to the sword.’

‘You are misinformed,’ Athelstan said stonily. ‘They put women and children to the sword. In Oxford they burned them alive in the church where they sought sanctuary.’

Æthelred waved a hand. ‘That was done in error.’

Athelstan gaped at him. An error, he called it. Yet there was no sign of regret on the king’s countenance, only mild irritation.

‘It was done in your name!’ Athelstan cried. ‘The deed is upon your soul.’

‘Not mine alone. I took counsel from my advisers.’

‘Then you were ill counselled! Whose advice did you seek? Let me guess. Eadric of Shrewsbury, who makes no secret of his hatred of the Danes who settled near his lands? Æthelmær of Oxford, who will probably double the size of his holdings as a result of this? Abbot Kenulf—’

‘I consulted the men who would be the first to die should our enemy attack us from within!’ Æthelred cut him off. ‘The kingdom is safer now that our enemy has been destroyed. I am safer!’

Athelstan stared at his father. How could a king be so blind to the consequences of what he had done?

‘You have not destroyed an enemy, my lord,’ he insisted. ‘You have created one. This act will come back to haunt you. Hundreds are dead at your behest. Pallig is dead, even though you gave him the gold to build his hall and granted him the land on which it stood. His wife, Gunhild, and their small child are dead. Think you that her brother, Swein Forkbeard, the fiercest of all the Danish warriors since Alfred’s time, will not seek vengeance?’

‘If so, then he will do it from outside the kingdom, not from within! I could not allow my enemies to dwell within my very borders, making themselves fat off our lands while they wait for a signal to turn upon us and attack. Wiser men than you have given their blessings to this action. They do not question the judgement of their king.’

‘The Danes living among us had no reason to attack, my lord. Now you have given them one. Mark my words, father, you will regret this unholy act. We will all of us regret it!’

‘Your regrets interest me not!’ the king spat. ‘We are finished here. Hubert!’

The king’s steward stepped into the chamber, bowed to his lord, and stood next to Athelstan, staring at him pointedly.

Frustrated and angered by his father’s resistance to logic, Athelstan slapped his hand on the table, turned, and stalked out of the room.

His father was a fool. He was wealthy, powerful, and blessed by God, yet still he was a fool. He was making decisions that would lead inexorably to disaster. It was like using Greek fire to douse a flame. And Athelstan greatly feared that now that the blaze had truly begun, they would none of them escape it.

Æthelred scowled as Athelstan withdrew from the chamber. His foolish son did not understand. How could he? He had not seen Edward’s wraith, had not been burdened with the foreknowledge of his own doom – had not been forced to take measures to prevent it.

But with this act that his son found so repellant he had triumphed over his enemies and over the vengeance that his dead brother sought to exact from beyond the grave. He had preserved his kingdom and his crown.

And surely he had banished for ever the hideous spectre that so haunted and tormented him.

‘My son chides me, Hubert,’ he said, ‘for defending the kingdom that he will one day inherit. He would pit his youthful wisdom against my experience and knowledge.’

‘He is seventeen, my lord. Consider that when you were seventeen you had been wearing a crown for over seven summers. Perhaps your son believes that he is just as capable as you were then.’

Æthelred frowned. Athelstan was still a whelp. He did not have the experience needed to understand the minds of men.

‘At seventeen I was much older than my years,’ he said. ‘My son, though, has not yet mastered the skills of a leader. He commands his few hearth guards, but he has not been tested.’

‘Yet, my lord, he did you a great service recently, did he not? Intervening when the Dane would have taken your life? Thus, he has shown skill and loyalty. Perhaps such a service should be rewarded with some form of recognition, some visible symbol of your regard for him.’

‘Grant him the Sword of Offa, you mean? Designate him my heir and give him estates to manage?’

‘If my lord Athelstan is taken up with his own responsibilities, he may spend far less time brooding over yours, my king.’

Æthelred rested his chin upon his folded hands and considered the suggestion. It had merit. Certainly his son deserved some recompense for his quick action that day in the minster square. To grant him the Sword of Offa would only confirm what was already commonly accepted – that the eldest ætheling would one day inherit the throne. As for the lands, it was perhaps time to give all three of his eldest sons more latitude in managing the estates they already held. It would keep them occupied and give them needed experience.

‘At the next witan,’ he said to Hubert, ‘we will bestow the sword upon my son and grant him other offices as well. Let him test his decision-making skills on his own men, and we shall see how well he does.’