Читать книгу The Emma of Normandy 2-book Collection: Shadow on the Crown and The Price of Blood - Patricia Bracewell - Страница 36

While the king was at Bath teams of workers had descended upon Winchester’s great hall, and by Easter day the massive chamber was resplendent – newly thatched and freshly painted. The carved acanthus leaves that twined sinuously around the enormous oaken columns and roof beams had been regilded so that they gleamed golden in the torchlight. Silken streamers looped overhead from pillar to pillar in clouds of gold and white. The tables had been laid for the great Easter feast, covered with linens and garlanded with flowers, and upon the royal dais the high table wore a cloth of shimmering gold.

Emma, seated next to Æthelred on Easter day, toyed with the almond-stuffed honeyed dates on her plate and wished that she had more appetite, for the meal had been lavish. Assorted cheeses, sliced eels, a terrine decorated to resemble the tower of the New Minster, and four different kinds of fish had been followed by enormous bowls of lamb stewed with leeks and pulses. Finally, golden brown peacocks, spit-roasted to perfection, their tail feathers splayed behind them in wide fans, had been ceremoniously borne to the tables.

Now, as the tables were cleared, Emma gazed out at the dazzling array of sumptuously dressed men and women. They gathered in languid groups, milling about in a kind of food-induced torpor, drinking vessels in hand while the wine and the mead continued to flow unabated. Behind Emma the king’s cupbearer, young Edward, was taking his new position quite seriously and had not spilled a single drop throughout the meal.

Her own cupbearer was Ealdorman Ælfric’s granddaughter, Hilde, a slim young beauty of eleven summers who had joined Emma’s household the day before. The girl’s mother had died of plague when Hilde was but a babe, and of her father, Ælfric’s son, the ealdorman would only say that the man was gone. Emma suspected a great sorrow there, and she did not press him. She found Hilde biddable, willing to please, and eager to learn palace ways. The girl, she thought, would do well in the royal household.

As she drank from the wine cup that Hilde replenished almost too frequently, Emma regretted that the child growing in her womb had robbed her of any pleasure she might take in food or drink. The wine, in particular – a newly arrived gift from her brother Richard – left a bitter aftertaste at the back of her throat. Nevertheless, she drank it – for she had need of the courage it bestowed.

The king’s demeanour today was solemn and forbidding – hardly the mood for a celebration of spring renewal. They had had little to say to each other during the course of the meal, and it occurred to her that it was not unlike the Easter feast of the year before, when she had dined with him as a new bride and he had glowered through the entire meal.

There were differences, though, she reminded herself, apart from her pregnancy. Today the bishop of Winchester, Ælfheah, sat on her right, and his thoughtful and intelligent conversation contrasted sharply with the king’s morose silence. And, in the crowd below her now, most of the faces were familiar. She could identify the factions that formed in little eddies around the room, and she could even guess at the topic of their conversations: they would be speculating about the child she carried.

She slipped her hand protectively across the small bulge at her belly.

She caught sight of Athelstan just then, standing with a knot of men that included his brothers Edmund and Ecbert. He seemed to feel her gaze, and he looked up and nodded to her. She smiled. As ever, her heart grew lighter at the sight of him. She had missed him during her long, weary stay at Wherwell. She had missed their long rides and easy conversations, had missed the way he bent his head towards her when she spoke of Normandy, had missed the passionate intensity in his face when he spoke of his plans for the future of the realm.

She had missed him far too much during the short winter days, and in the long nights her rest had been plagued by the memory of a single kiss. Often she had knelt in the dark chapel and raged at God for binding her to the father and not to the son. Why, she had asked Him, must she bear a child that had been conceived in bitterness and fear instead of a child born from love and trust?

If God had answered her, she had not heard Him.

She bit her lip, drank again from her wine cup, and turned her gaze to the scop who had begun to play for the assembly. She did not dare rest her eyes or her thoughts any longer upon the king’s eldest son.

Æthelred, sated with rich food and strong drink, regarded the throng in the hall with detachment. It turned to displeasure, though, when he saw his eldest sons in huddled conversation with Ælfhelm’s brood and their northern companions. The bond that continued to exist between his sons and the Mercian nobles was likely to become troublesome if he did not find a way to break it. And what business was it that kept Ælfhelm himself in the north when he should be here at the Easter feast?

His glance fell on Elgiva then, and his displeasure grew. She was beguiling two of the Mercian lords who had lobbied in her favour during the debate over his choice of a wife – their support purchased, he suspected, by her father’s gold. Æthelred wondered how much influence Ealdorman Ælfhelm, and by extension Elgiva, had now with the northern lords. He was no fool. He recognized Elgiva’s thirst for power. It was a family trait, one that all her father’s brood shared. He could easily imagine the uses that Ælfhelm might make of his daughter as messenger, as spy – as king’s whore. She had pleased him well enough in that role, although of late his disapproving bishops had forced him to set her aside. But if she could whore for him, she could whore for someone else as well, and that might lead to alliances too dangerous to contemplate. What, he wondered, were his sons discussing with Elgiva’s kinsmen?

He would have to put a rein on the girl. He could not allow her to stray too far out of his reach – a problem just now because Emma, empowered by the child in her womb, had dismissed her. That must not stand. He could not keep Elgiva’s ambitions in check if she were not close at hand.

He would have to persuade Emma to bring the girl back. It was beneath him to meddle in the queen’s household affairs, but he had no choice. He needed Emma’s cooperation in this. Christ, he was going to have to woo his wife. How much was it going to cost him?

He took a wizened apple from the bowl before him, leaned slightly towards Emma, and said, ‘I would speak with you of the Lady Elgiva.’

Emma stiffened. Well, he had known it would not be easy.

Carefully, he sliced the apple, offering Emma the first piece and waiting patiently until she took it.

‘Have you considered,’ he asked, ‘why it behooves us to keep Elgiva here in Winchester?’

She bit into the fruit, and a small, thoughtful frown creased her smooth forehead.

‘You fear a marriage alliance in the north,’ she said softly, ‘that might sunder the allegiance of your northern lords.’

So she did recognize the danger. He had forgotten again how cunning she was, and that she, too, had her ways of discovering things.

‘Even so,’ he said quietly. He gave her another slice of apple. ‘Your brother wed you, I fear, to a king under siege. The Danes press upon us from the east. The chieftains from Ireland strike at our western shores to grab whatever cattle and gold they can. Warlords who answer to Alba’s king would snatch our northern borderlands all the way to Jorvik, if they could. My own nobles are restive. Their allegiances to each other are stronger than their oaths to me. Yet because my daughters are too young as yet to bind the more powerful ealdormen closer to me, I must use more,’ he paused, searching for an acceptable word, ‘unorthodox measures to control those most likely to conspire against me.’

She looked straight at him, her expression solemn and grave.

‘Whatever your political difficulties may be, my lord,’ she said, ‘it is not seemly for you to have two women at your side. A year ago you made me your wife, yet the Lady of Northampton would claim that which should be mine.’ She set down the slice of apple and wiped her fingers delicately with the edge of the tablecloth as if she were wiping her hands of Elgiva. ‘I have borne with that lady’s ambitions for far too long and will do so no longer. I will not have a rival in my household.’

He pondered this for a moment. Was it possible that Emma, who had never welcomed his attentions as her husband and lord, was jealous of Elgiva? He supposed that it could be so. It was possible to care little for something yet care very much that no one else should lay claim to it. Women were weak creatures, he had observed, and therefore susceptible to the most grievous of sins.

‘I do not perceive Elgiva as your rival,’ he said, hoping to placate her.

‘It is how others perceive her that concerns me,’ she replied. ‘Your attentions to her while you were at Bath did not go unremarked, I assure you. As your queen, soon to be the mother of your son, God willing, it is I who should be always at your side, not Elgiva.’

Æthelred, irritated, tightened his grip on apple and knife, controlling each cut with precision. Would that he could control his troublesome queen so well. When he had agreed to marry Richard’s sister he had hoped that he would find her pliable, willing to be ruled by him in all things. He had hoped for a young wife who would accept his favours gratefully and would meekly agree to all his desires.

Emma was none of these things. Yet he could not rid himself of this queen, and there were many at his court who would agree with everything that she had just said were he to give them the opportunity. The clergy, to his disgust, adored her, and the higher she rose in their esteem, the lower he fell. If anything should happen to Emma’s child, or if the Danes should attack, or the crops fail, or a plague strike, the blame would be laid upon his shoulders. They would declare it God’s punishment for his debauchery.

And so, if he wanted to maintain control over the actions of Elgiva and her kin, he was going to have to appease his queen and offer her a compromise. He did not like it, but he saw no alternative.

He placed his right hand, palm open, upon the table, and gave Emma a meaningful look. She raised a questioning eyebrow but placed her hand in his.

‘I vow, my lady,’ he said, curling his fingers over hers, ‘that at every possible public function, in the church and in the palace and in the hall, I will keep you close to my side. In return for this you must find a way to keep Elgiva close to yours.’

Emma considered the king’s words, weighing her options. Even if she agreed to his proposition, she could not know for certain that he would keep his vow. And then there was the matter of Elgiva. She had no wish to keep that lady in her household, but if she refused the king’s request there would be consequences. She knew him well enough now to recognize that, and she did not care to consider what form his reprisal might take.

So, knowing that she might be making a bargain with the devil, she nodded in agreement. She did not see that she had any other choice.

As the king raised her hand to plant a kiss upon her ring, Emma glanced out at the company below the dais. Elgiva was there, looking up at her with a cold smile that made the fine hairs on the back of her neck rise.

‘Let us drink to our bargain,’ she heard the king say. He called for their cups to be filled, but after they drank, Emma set her cup down and pushed it away from her.

‘I am learning that your child does not care overmuch for wine, my lord,’ she said.

‘Then, lady,’ he replied, ‘you must give him good English mead instead.’

Many hours later, in the dark watches of the night, Emma lay tangled in the clinging web of dream. She was riding Ange bareback along the beach at Fécamp in high summer. A hot wind blew against her face and the sun beat down hard, its heat radiating in visible waves from the white sand. Beneath her garments her body was drenched with sweat – her thighs clammy and slick with it as they pressed against the horse’s hide.

Her legs ached from her efforts to control her mount, for Ange pelted headlong in a wild, unsteady gallop, and suddenly, beneath horse and rider, the sand turned to rock. Each hoofbeat sent pain shooting from Emma’s tensed legs up through the core of her body, and the grinding agony of it grew so intense that she thought she must die. She tried to scream for help, but she could not force any sound past the fear that wrapped around her throat like a length of rope pulled tight.

Some tiny corner of her mind recognized the stuff of nightmare, and with an effort of will she opened her eyes. The darkness of her curtained bed replaced the burning brightness of her dream, but the searing waves of pain still clawed at her, and the scream of anguish that had stuck in her throat loosened at last and tore free.

Instinctively she drew herself into a tight ball around her womb. The child was coming too soon. She screamed for Margot, and then felt the covers ripped from her. Strong hands grasped her shoulders, and Margot was there, calling her name – her voice commanding and her face hard.

‘You must push, Emma! You cannot save the child. Do you hear me? There is nothing you can do to save the child. It belongs to God already. Now you must save yourself. If you want to live, you must push!’

Afterwards she would remember it as part of the nightmare – the pungent smell of blood and the crescendos of pain that crested and broke and crested inside her womb over and over. With Wymarc on the bed behind her for support and Margot reaching between her bloody, naked thighs, she braced herself against them, straining and pushing until she had freed her body of the tiny burden that it had borne for so little a time.

Released from the worst of the pain, but aching and empty, Emma lay desolate as her women tended her. It was only when she saw Wymarc take up the tiny bundle and carry it towards the door that she roused herself.

‘Wait,’ she called. She would not have her babe disposed of like so much night soil. ‘Send for Father Martin. I want him to bless the child.’ It could not be baptized, but she could send it to God with a blessing. ‘In the morning we shall bury it in the minster garden.’

It was such a little thing, this child, with no one to protect it but her. And she had failed at the one task that she had been given.

She turned to Margot, her vision blurring with tears that she wiped away with the back of a hand. ‘What did I do wrong?’ she asked. ‘What did I do to hurt the babe?’

Margot sat at the edge of the bed and took her hand. ‘You did nothing,’ she said gently. ‘Do not blame yourself.’

‘But I am to blame! I told the king that I would hate this child because it was his.’ She closed her eyes at the memory. ‘It was not true. You were right. I would have loved the babe, yet God punished me for speaking such evil.’ She did not confess all of it. She did not speak of how she had raged at God for binding her to a man for whom she could feel neither respect nor love. In her heart she had wished her husband dead. God, hearing her, had taken the child instead.

Margot turned Emma’s face so that she looked into the familiar eyes of the woman who had cared for her for as long as she could remember.

‘I do not believe,’ Margot said, ‘in a God that punishes unborn children for a mother’s hasty words. Nor should you. Think you that the Lord cannot read your heart? Surely He knows that you loved this child. We shall never know why such an innocent was lost to us, nor should we ask to know the workings of God. We can only thank Him for your safe deliverance and pray that your womb quickens with child again soon.’

But God had, indeed, read her heart, and He had found wickedness there. She looked over at the tiny bundle still in Wymarc’s arms, and her anguish at her loss engulfed her yet again. What would happen now? What if her womb never quickened again? Or what if it did, but she gave birth only to dead children? Her life would have been a complete and utter waste.

She turned her face into the pillow to stifle her tears, and a moment later felt a gentle hand upon her head and heard Margot’s soothing voice.

‘You must do your grieving now, my lady,’ Margot whispered, ‘and then I beg you to let this babe go. You cannot cling to it, not even in your heart. There will be other babes.’

‘But what if there are not?’ She grieved for the babe, but it was not that loss that terrified her. It was her fear of what the future held that weighed upon her like a black cloud. She did not know how to dispel it.

‘You will have more children,’ Margot said, and her voice held a matter-of-fact certainty that Emma clutched at with hope.

She turned to face Margot, searching for reassurance. The age lines in that familiar face seemed deeper than usual. It had been a long, weary night for Margot, too, yet her eyes were clear and bright, and when Emma looked into their brown depths they did not blink. ‘How can you be sure?’ she whispered.

‘Because,’ the old woman said, taking Emma’s hand into her own and squeezing it, ‘there is no reason on this earth why you should not.’ She heaved a long sigh. ‘I speak to you as one who lost three babes, one after another, born before their time. Yet I saw six sons grow to manhood. Your mother, too, lost three babes in much the same way. Did you not know?’

Emma shook her head. She had been the youngest. All she knew of childbirth she had witnessed when Judith had presented Richard with a son after a labour so brief that even Margot had been astonished.

Margot was smiling now. ‘It will take no miracle for you to get with child again, my lady, so long as the king is willing. The miracle would be if you did not.’

So long as the king is willing. And what of her willingness to give her body to the king? That duty was demanded of her by the laws of church and state, but she could not bear to think of it. Not now. With this child she had attained a small portion of the prestige that was due to her. Now all was lost.

She closed her eyes, numb with a weariness that she did not wish to master. She felt as though she had fallen into a deep well, and she could not convince herself that she had the strength or the will to climb out of it again.

On Easter Monday the Winchester market bustled with activity. Villagers from nearby hamlets had been drawn to the spring fair to celebrate winter’s end, and the Ceap was filled with buyers, sellers, and a large number of gawkers. Merchant stalls lining both sides of the street displayed goods that came from as near as London and as far away as Constantinople.

By midday Elgiva, escorted by several of her brother’s hearth guards, had been browsing the market for some time. Although the sun was bright, a chill wind blew from the south and was finding its way beneath her cloak. Elgiva felt cold to her very bones, but it had nothing to do with the breeze.

She had sent Groa to the palace close for news of the queen, and by her reckoning, Groa should have been back long before now. Any rumours about Emma would flash through the palace like wildfire. Groa had only to wander near the bread ovens or the brewing cauldrons to glean anything of interest, so where was she?

Nervously Elgiva fingered a length of gold-threaded silk, ignoring the mercer’s eager prattle. What if something had gone amiss? She picked up a length of russet silk and saw that the merchant – a tall, thin man with a beaky nose and the eyes of a hawk – watched her with inordinate interest. Her hands were trembling so badly that the silk rippled, and she set it aside for fear that the merchant would notice her distress. A moment later she saw Groa hurrying towards her from the direction of the palace.

‘Put this aside for me,’ she said to the mercer, pointing to the bolt of silk with as pleasant a smile as she could muster. She had been here too long; it might arouse suspicion if she left without a purchase. ‘I’ll send someone for it later.’

Gesturing at her brother’s men to walk several steps behind her, she grasped Groa’s arm and walked in the direction of Shieldmaker Street, where her brother’s town house lay.

‘What is the news?’ she demanded.

‘The child is no more, my lady,’ Groa murmured.

So it had actually worked. She breathed a long sigh of relief. The child was dead, and she would not be the only one in the kingdom to rejoice at the news.

‘What of the queen?’ she asked.

Groa shook her head. ‘I could learn nothing of the queen except that she had lost the babe. The king and his sons rode to the hunt today, so we can presume that she is well enough. It may be days before we learn if she has taken any hurt from the potion.’

‘And if she does?’ Elgiva whispered. ‘Will there likely be any suspicion about the wine?’

‘Nay,’ Groa murmured. ‘The queen’s new cupbearer was too dazzled by the courtly glitter to take any notice of what I did near the flagon. And even if suspicions were aroused, how could anyone determine who was responsible? There are many at court who have no desire to see this queen bear a child, and that includes the king’s own sons. Be assured that no one will question this loss, or even mourn it overmuch.’

‘Then it has turned out as well as we could have hoped,’ Elgiva said. ‘You have done very well.’

‘I have other news.’ Groa’s voice was smug. ‘You are to be summoned back into the queen’s service, perhaps as soon as today.’

Elgiva slowed her step a little.

‘This must be the king’s doing.’ She had seen him watching her yesterday when she had been so attentive to Wulfgeat and Leofwine. She had set out to make him jealous, and apparently she had succeeded.

‘He still desires you,’ Groa insisted.

Of course he desired her. She never doubted it. He would have her back at court, and Emma could do nothing about it.

How swiftly the queen’s ascendant star had fallen with the loss of the child, and how quickly her own, now, would rise again.

The spring weather held fair and mild, and on the downs of Wessex the sheep and cattle grazed on thick new grass. In the forests along the river bluebells carpeted the ground with blossoms, and it seemed that there was a kind of blessing upon the land. When storm clouds did come they shed their bounty upon the earth during the night, while the days were awash with sunlight. So April slipped away, and when southerly winds brought no sign of dragon ships from the harsh northern lands, folk began to hope that this year Æthelred’s realm might be free of fire and pillage.

For Emma, though, the beautiful spring days were almost intolerable. It seemed to her that she alone lived within a dark cloud. Her body had recovered quickly from the trial of miscarriage, but her spirit remained burdened with the pain of her loss. Each day she woke with a sense of despair and foreboding that she could not escape – a lassitude that bound her like a snare. She took little interest in the things that should have demanded her attention. Pleas for direction from Hugh in Exeter went unheeded; missives from her mother and her brothers went unanswered. She kept mostly to her chambers, imprisoned now by her own will rather than Æthelred’s. Even the children could not draw her out of her lethargy. She could no longer join in their play or be their confidante and comforter. Instead it was Hilde who, hardly more than a child herself, supervised their care.

Occasionally she would catch a glimpse of Athelstan in the midst of his brothers and retainers, and sometimes his eyes met hers before he looked away. His face, in those brief encounters, was always solemn, and if there was any silent meaning in his grave expression, she could not read it. He never attempted to speak to her or send her any message, and it was as if the companionship that had once existed between them belonged to another life. The child that she had carried for so short a time, she believed, lay like an invisible wall between them, and that only added to her despair.

She rarely saw the king, except at the evening meal in the great hall when she took her place beside him at the high table. True to her promise to him, she placed Elgiva beside her there. If Emma noticed that Elgiva seemed not so content with her favoured position as before – for the king’s attentions to that lady had cooled considerably – Emma gave no sign. Her heart ached with such longing for the child she had lost that she paid little heed to the tempers and trials of the other members of the king’s court. She responded listlessly to the king’s inquiries about her health and dreaded his return to her bed, knowing that it must happen soon. As spring lengthened towards summer, Æthelred sent his own leech to examine her, and in spite of Margot’s protests, the man bled her, then pronounced her well enough to attend to her lord’s needs.

That evening Emma prepared herself for a visit from the king, but to her surprise and relief, he did not come. Instead, he sent word that the court would move to London within the week, and that she must prepare for the journey. It was a command, she knew, yet she did not see how she could obey it. She sent word to Æthelred that she did not yet feel strong enough to make such an arduous journey and begged to be allowed to remain in Winchester. Then she waited in an agony of suspense for his response. She had couched it as a request, but how Æthelred would interpret it would depend upon his mood at the time.

His response, when it came, was scrawled on a wax tablet. She had to study it for some time before she could decipher it.

I will grant this request, but push me no further. For too long have you neglected the duties owed to your king. My patience is nearly at an end.

So she had bought herself a little time – perhaps a month, but no more. She must content herself with that.

Almost as soon as the king and his court departed, the spring weather turned from sunshine to grim, unrelenting rain. Under its spell the mood in the queen’s apartments became as sombre and listless as Emma herself, and she could not rouse herself to change it. Elgiva, apparently irritated that the king had left her behind, was sullen and ill-tempered, using her tongue to lash anyone who crossed her. Servants whispered of a malignant spirit that had cursed the queen and so caused the death of her unborn child. Alarmed by the rumours, Wymarc insisted that Emma wear every piece of amber jewellery that she owned, for amber was a talisman against evil. Margot, too, sought to break the spell that held the queen, placing rosemary under Emma’s pillow to give her pleasant dreams. Yet the shadow of hopelessness that seemed to enfold Emma like a shroud refused to lift.

In the end it was young Edward who drew Emma from her despair. An ague had kept him from accompanying his father to London, and a week or so after the king’s departure, the boy’s condition worsened. Emma ordered a servant to carry Edward into her own chamber, where she and Margot could tend him, and suddenly her days had a purpose and a meaning. Hour after hour she sat at Edward’s bedside, placing cool cloths upon his fevered skin, coaxing spoonfuls of Margot’s willow bark infusion past his chapped lips, lulling the restless boy to sleep with stories of Normandy. But Edward’s condition did not improve, and Emma’s heart ached at his suffering. She sent a messenger to London, advising the king that Edward’s illness was grave; then she waited, daily anticipating Æthelred’s return.

It was late one May evening that a royal party arrived within the palace grounds. The king, Emma surmised, had come at last. She glanced towards the shadowy corner where Margot, who would keep the long night watch, sat dozing. All of her other attendants were abed, and she saw no reason to summon them. The king’s staff would see to his immediate needs, and it may be some time yet before he came to find his son.

Edward lay shirtless beneath the bed linens, and Emma repeatedly bathed his face and upper body with cool water in an effort to banish the fever that held him in restless dreams. His hair had been cut short so they could tend him more easily, and he looked far younger than his eleven summers. He moaned in his sleep, and as Emma took his hot hand in hers, a servant slipped into the room to whisper that Lord Athelstan was asking to see his brother.

She started at this, but in a moment her heart lifted, as if some great weight she had been carrying had suddenly slipped away. She bade the servant escort the ætheling into the chamber, then she tried to ignore the trembling of her limbs as she waited for him in the near darkness. There were a thousand things that she longed to say to Athelstan. Every day the pile of words that remained unspoken between them grew higher and broader. Yet the words she would speak were utterly forbidden, and so she must remain forever mute. Just to have him near, though, would be some consolation.

She rose as he entered the room, and in the dim candlelight she drank in the sight of him – the thatch of bright hair, the startlingly dark eyebrows, the wide mouth, the beard the colour of raw honey, the solemn blue eyes.

He paused in front of her, and as their glances met she read there the same gravity – cold and distant – with which he had greeted her ever since her return to court. It chilled her like a winter wind.

He gestured for her to sit and, drawing a stool next to her chair, took his place beside her.

‘My father received your message but matters keep him in London, and he sent me to learn how Edward is faring.’ Awkwardly, he touched Edward’s cheek with the back of his hand. ‘Jesu, he is so hot.’

‘I am frightened for him,’ she whispered, studying Edward’s face, as she had for days, looking for some sign of improvement. She did not find it. Flushed with fever, his nose thin and pinched with lack of nourishment, he barely resembled the brown-faced boy who had ridden with them along the Itchen the summer before. ‘My sister suffered from agues all her life, but I cannot remember that she was ever as sick as this. Edward complains of pains in his arms and legs, and of a scalding in his throat. Nothing we do eases him.’

She glanced at Athelstan and saw a shadow cross his face. Her words had alerted him to his brother’s danger, and it pained her to be the one to deliver such evil tidings. Yet it was better that he know now what may have to be faced all too soon.

‘My father,’ he said, his eyes still on the boy, ‘has asked the bishop and all the clergy in London to offer prayers for his recovery. Do you hear that, Edward? All of London is praying for you now.’

She, too, had prayed for Edward, but her prayers had sprung from a bitter heart, and God had not answered her.

‘Perhaps God will listen to them,’ she said. ‘He has not listened to me.’ The rage that had lain coiled within her, suppressed in silence and in bitter tears, sprang suddenly to life. ‘Why is God so cruel?’ she demanded, fisting her hands and beating them impotently against her knees. She longed to weep, but she would not give God the satisfaction. ‘Why does He punish innocent children for the sins of others?’

Athelstan heard the despair in her voice, and it smote his heart. She was his father’s wife, and for that reason he had schooled himself to look upon her with a stern regard that showed neither pity nor compassion. He could not do so now. Her anguished eyes, bruised with weariness, were fixed upon Edward, but he guessed that she must be thinking as well of the babe that she had lost. If God was cruel, then Emma was as much a victim of His cruelty as poor Edward. She had lost her own child, and now she lived in fear of losing a son that she had embraced as her own.

He searched for words that would give her consolation, but what did he know of the mind of God? He was a warrior, not a priest. His duty was to fight, and it was up to the priests to sort things out with the Lord. Yet how was anyone to fight and win against the will of the Almighty? How was one even to recognize God’s hand at work in the world when there was so much darkness and misery?

Emma, though, needed consolation, however clumsy it might be.

‘We are God’s instruments for vengeance or for mercy, are we not?’ he asked gently. ‘So if you would look for the hand of God in Edward’s illness,’ he took hold of her hand, and held it before her, ‘look to the hands that have given him relief from pain and have tended him with a mother’s care.’

It did not content her, though. She shook her head, drew her hand from his, and gently ministered again to Edward. His brother’s thin face was no longer flushed but eerily pale now in the flickering light.

What if Edward should die? He had never thought much about death, in spite of the hundreds of sermons he had heard detailing man’s ultimate fate in the most harrowing terms. Even now he could not reconcile himself to the prospect of a world without Edward, for he was but a boy. It seemed impossible that he should die. Yet children, even the children of kings, did die. His own father was the only one of three brothers to survive to manhood.

Unbidden, the words of the seeress at Warwick sprang into his mind. She had predicted that he would not inherit his father’s kingdom. He could not fathom such an outcome – unless he were to die before his father did. Was that what she had been trying to tell him? Was that to be God’s will – his destiny as well as Edward’s?

He scrubbed his face briskly with his hands, trying to rid his mind of such morbid thoughts. At the same moment, Emma gave a small cry. When he looked he saw her leaning forward, her palms pressed against Edward’s breast.

‘What is it?’ he demanded, tense with foreboding.

‘I don’t know,’ she cried. ‘Something has happened. Margot!’

In an instant the old Norman dame appeared from out of the shadows and shooed them away from the bed. She bent over Edward, setting her ear against his mouth, then touching his neck with her fingers. Athelstan held his breath.

Dear God. Had his mortal thoughts somehow beckoned Death to his brother’s side?

When the old nurse called for a servant and turned to Emma, placing her hands on the queen’s shoulders, he felt a chill run from his spine to his fingertips. He closed his eyes, and through a fog of despair and grief he heard the old woman rattle something in a burst of Norman French. Although he could not comprehend her words, he knew that Edward must be dead.

He drew in a heavy breath and opened his eyes to find Emma before him, her face lit with joy and relief. She took his hand.

‘The fever has broken, my lord,’ she said. ‘God has answered our prayers at last.’

He looked past her to where Edward lay profoundly asleep, oblivious to the women who now went about the task of changing his damp, tumbled linens.

‘Can it be true?’ he asked, hardly daring to believe it. ‘Could the tide of his illness turn so swiftly?’

‘He is far from well yet,’ Emma murmured, ‘but Margot says that now he should begin to mend.’ She smiled, but her eyes were filled with tears. ‘Perhaps he heard you when you spoke to him, and it was your voice that drew him back to us. He would do anything for you. You are his hero; did you know that?’

He shook his head, wondering what else Emma knew about Edward that he did not. She still gripped his hands, and for his part, he had no wish to let her go. He wanted to pull her close and enfold her in his arms as if he had the right to do so. But he did not have that right, and the awareness of it tortured him so that he loosed her hands and frowned at her.

‘Edward’s recovery is none of my doing,’ he said. ‘It was your care that saved him, and so I will tell my father.’ He glanced again at the bed. ‘I will leave for London in the morning. May I visit him again before I go?’

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘but I cannot promise that he will be awake when you come. Can you not send a messenger to your father? It will do Edward good to have you here for a time, however brief it may be.’

‘I cannot stay. The king would have me return to London tomorrow.’ He saw that his curt reply had wounded her, but he could think of no way to dull the sharp edge of duty that must always lie like a sword between them.

‘Of course, my lord,’ she said stiffly. ‘I will bid you good night then.’

He nodded to her and walked quickly from the room. He was sorely tempted to stay, and that would be a grave error indeed.

In the moments after Athelstan left, Emma felt as cold and empty as a bell that has lost its tongue. She longed to follow him, to crawl into his arms and feel their warmth and strength, to feel the comfort of his touch once more. But there was no place for her in Athelstan’s arms, for he was not her lord nor ever would be.

A moment later Margot was at her side, urging her to lie down and sleep, but there was something else that she must do first. She wrapped her shawl close around her, called for a light bearer, and made her way behind him through several passages to the tiny private chapel that had been set up by Æthelred’s first wife. Emma did not like this place, for it was little more than a barren closet with nothing about it to offer comfort to a weary soul. Nevertheless, tonight she slipped inside and dropped to her knees before the altar. She whispered a prayer of thanksgiving for the gift of Edward’s life, and she asked God’s forgiveness for her doubts and her sins. She offered Him a promise as well. She would no longer shirk her duties as Æthelred’s wife and queen, and she would shut her heart to temptation.