Читать книгу The Emma of Normandy 2-book Collection: Shadow on the Crown and The Price of Blood - Patricia Bracewell - Страница 35

Elgiva held her breath as the cowled figure seated opposite her drew back the concealing hood, but she relaxed when she saw that it was Emma who gazed at her in the dim light and not some pitiless Norman henchman. As the wain lurched over the muddy, rutted road, Emma fixed stern eyes on Elgiva, and she grew uneasy again. The queen looked ill, her face drawn and cold. She clearly had something unpleasant that she wanted to say, and Elgiva wished herself anywhere but here.

‘I have heard reports,’ Emma said at last, ‘that you have found great favour with the king.’

Elgiva sat up a little straighter. This was no less than she expected, but clearly Emma was fishing. She could not know for certain of Elgiva’s trysts with the king unless Æthelred had told her. She felt a tiny shiver of misgiving. Could the king have confessed his sin to his wife?

She cleared her throat and said, ‘I have been blessed with some skill as a weaver of tales, my lady – for which I thank God. My stories seem to amuse the king.’

‘Ah, Elgiva.’ It was almost a sigh. ‘You are, indeed, a storyteller.’ Emma folded her arms and her glance became appraising. ‘And you have beauty as well as talent. It is no wonder that the king values your … services. I hope that he rewards you to your satisfaction.’

Elgiva looked demurely down at her hands. ‘The king’s pleasure,’ she said, ‘is all my reward. I seek no other.’ She looked up at Emma with what she hoped was a chaste smile.

Emma smiled too, so sweetly that Elgiva almost believed it, but not quite.

‘Nevertheless,’ Emma said, ‘we all have secret longings. I wonder what it is that you desire in your deepest heart.’

Elgiva kept her face guileless and said, ‘I can think of nothing, my lady.’

‘Can you not?’ Emma’s head tilted to one side. ‘And yet, I am told that once you thought to be Æthelred’s queen.’

Emma’s pale green eyes all but pinned Elgiva to her seat, and Elgiva could not turn her own away. Which one of them, she wondered, would blink first?

‘It was my father who put me forward for that honour,’ she said. ‘I am innocent of any such ambition, my lady, I assure you.’

Emma raised one eloquent eyebrow.

‘You need not protest your innocence to me, Elgiva,’ she said. ‘My mind is entirely made up on that score.’

Elgiva kept her expression perfectly bland. She understood Emma’s twisted meaning well enough, but she would die before she would let Emma see it. She waited for whatever would come next.

‘I wish to explain something to you today,’ Emma said, brusquely, ‘because I want there to be a perfect understanding between us.’ She leaned forward a little, so that her face was very close to Elgiva’s. ‘I am Æthelred’s anointed queen,’ she said, pronouncing her words so carefully that her Norman accent all but disappeared. ‘I will never step aside, willingly or unwillingly. The king will never put another in my place. Whatever hopes you may have, lady, you will never be Æthelred’s queen.’

Elgiva felt a momentary pang of compassion for Emma, because of course the queen was mistaken. If she remained barren nothing could prevent Æthelred from putting her aside.

‘My only hope, my lady, is to remain in your service and to please you,’ she said. ‘I hope you do not doubt my loyalty to you. I pray daily for your health and for the blessings of children upon your union with the king.’

Emma gave a short laugh, cut off as the jolting of the wain flung her back against the cushions.

‘Then it will please you to learn that your prayers have been answered, Elgiva, for I have, indeed, been blessed. Even now I am with child.’

It was the last thing that she had expected to hear, and for a moment she merely stared, stunned, at Æthelred’s queen. How had the Norman bitch managed to conceive? She had been shut up in her convent for months, and even before that the king had had little to do with his wife. She herself had seen to that. Pulling herself together, she bestowed a smile on Emma.

‘This is wonderful news, my lady,’ she said. ‘Indeed, I am very pleased to hear it. Who would not be?’

Emma’s eyebrow flicked up again. ‘A great many people, I expect,’ she said, almost to herself. Then she said, ‘Because of the child, it will be necessary for me to make some changes in my household. I will want to have about me women who are experienced with babies and with childbirth. I am sorry to have to dismiss any of my ladies, but so it must be, in order to make room for others. As you, Elgiva, are yet a maid, I fear that you do not have the knowledge or experience that I will need in the months to come. I have already arranged it that tomorrow you will be returned to your estate in Mercia.’

The wain gave another sudden lurch, and Elgiva felt her stomach clench, although it was not from the jarring. She licked her lips to respond to Emma, but her mouth had gone dry. So this was how Emma would rid herself of a rival. The plan had much to commend it, as it was innocent, painless, and bloodless. Emma would not be responsible for whatever might happen to Elgiva when she faced her father’s wrath after such a dismissal.

Did the king know about Emma’s plan? She suspected that he did not. With Emma pregnant and the Lenten fast behind him, Æthelred would be in need of a woman, and Elgiva had no intention of being sent away from Winchester when her services, as Emma had put it, would surely be required.

‘You are all kindness, my lady,’ she said. ‘I think, however, that given your obvious lack of confidence in me, it would be best if I do not return with you to the palace. My brother Wulf, who rides today at the king’s side, owns a town house in Winchester. He will care for me until my father can come to claim me.’

For a moment, Emma looked nonplussed, and Elgiva drew some satisfaction from that. Nay, lady, she thought, you will not have it all your own way.

‘As you wish,’ Emma said.

It was not as Elgiva wished at all, but for now it would have to do.

They rattled along the Winchester Road, the cart jouncing them up or sideways – a reminder that the day’s journey would be long and far from smooth.

And pregnancy, Elgiva thought, contemplating Emma’s worn expression, was much the same, fraught with dangers for both mother and child. Any number of things could cause a woman to go into labour too soon and lose her child. Any number of things. The queen may have won this little skirmish, but until she gave birth to a healthy, living child, the battle between them was not yet over.