Читать книгу The Emma of Normandy 2-book Collection: Shadow on the Crown and The Price of Blood - Patricia Bracewell - Страница 37

The king returned to Winchester at the head of a long train of retainers and under a fierce sun that had frayed his already short temper. A month spent in the bishop’s London palace had forced him into celibacy, and to make matters worse his high ecclesiastics had spent the time chastising him for ignoring his marital duties to his queen. He would rectify that soon enough, though. He would soon put her on her back, for she had kept him at bay for too long.

It was nearing twilight when he dismounted in the palace yard and tossed his reins to a groom. There would be food awaiting him in the hall, but he had business with the queen first. As he made his way to her apartments a small crowd of petitioners surrounded him, every one of them yammering pleas, none of which would have interested him even if he could have deciphered the gabble. He forced his way through them, although not before some enterprising lout had thrust a bit of parchment into his hand, which he palmed and then forgot.

He strode purposefully into the queen’s quarters, ascended the stairs, and flung open the chamber door. Emma and her priest sat at a table covered with letters. A knot of women sat off to one side, fluttering and clucking until they saw him and fell into silent obeisance.

‘Get out,’ he grunted.

Emma had already risen to her feet, and she nodded to the priest, who scrambled to gather up the scrolls.

‘Leave those,’ Æthelred ordered.

The chamber emptied quickly, and he turned to Emma. She stood her ground, facing him with that stiff little chin of hers angled upwards and one eyebrow cocked with curiosity.

He had a matter to raise with her that would wipe that smug look from her face, but it could wait. Grasping her wrist he made for the inner chamber, tugging her after him.

‘Don’t pretend that you do not know why I am here,’ he growled, slinging her towards the bed that lay hidden behind lush hangings.

He did not bother to ask after her health, for he wanted no excuses. The last time he had favoured her with his intimacy she had resisted him. He would have none of that today.

He watched with satisfaction as she shed her gown and shift. Dropping the bit of rolled parchment he’d been handed, he discarded his belt, tunic, breecs, and hose. When he turned again to Emma, he was surprised at how quickly he was aroused by the sight of her lying naked on the sheets, her white thighs obligingly spread to receive him. He wasted no time, spilling his seed into her vigorously and swiftly. Afterwards, spent, he lay sprawled on top of her enjoying the scent and the feel of her woman’s flesh. Then he raised himself on his forearms to study her face.

The light in the chamber was dim, for only a single oil lamp hanging from a chain near the door threw its glow across the bed. It was enough, though, for now.

Emma shifted beneath him in an effort to push him away.

‘May I get up, my lord?’ she asked.

‘Nay, lady. We are not finished yet, you and I.’ Her pale braid had come undone during their coupling, and now he toyed with a long lock of her hair, wrapping it about his finger absently as he watched her face. ‘Tell me what you know of your brother’s new alliance with the Danish king.’

She gave him a look as guileless as a child’s. ‘I know nothing,’ she said. ‘My brother has not confided in me.’

He cocked an eyebrow, considering her reply. It might be the truth. His spies had not reported any missives from Normandy that spoke of an alliance with Swein Forkbeard. Still, he did not quite trust her.

‘Your brother has been remiss, then,’ he said, tugging at the blond tress so that she winced, ‘for he is, indeed, negotiating with Swein.’

‘Perhaps it is some matter of trade—’

‘Even so,’ he said, and now he pulled harder to make sure that he had her attention. ‘What do you think they are likely to trade between them? I shall tell you. Poor English folk dragged from their homes to be sold as slaves, shiploads of silver, and booty from English towns.’

And there was the little matter of Swein’s revenge for the death of his sister on St Brice’s feast day. In London the bishops had railed at him interminably about the likelihood of the Danish king’s vengeance, and though he had made light of it, his own fear of Swein’s retaliation gnawed at his gut like an incurable, weeping wound.

Emma was squirming beneath him now in a vain effort to ease the pain he was inflicting.

‘Stop it,’ she hissed.

But he had no intention of stopping. With his other hand he twisted another bright strand about his fingers and pulled that as well. She would have clawed him like a she-cat, he guessed, but he’d taken the precaution of pinning her arms at her sides.

‘Earthly pain leads to greater glory in heaven, does it not?’ he asked. ‘Be submissive to life’s afflictions, lady, and you will find them easier to bear. I’ve told you that before.’

‘Tell me what you want,’ she said through clenched teeth.

He smiled, but he did not ease the pressure. It would take far more than this to break Emma, but he would master her eventually, hopefully before her belly swelled again.

‘I would have you remember that you are the queen of the English and no longer a tool of the Norman duke,’ he replied. ‘You will write to your brother and remind him of his promises to me. It would be unfortunate if he should commit himself to an alliance that you, more than anyone else, might regret. Do you understand me?’

There were tears in her eyes now, though she did not weep. She was cold, this one. Even in her pain, Emma did not weep.

‘I understand,’ she ground out.

‘Good. I shall expect to see the letter tomorrow.’

To remind her of her task, he snagged the tender flesh beneath her ear with his teeth. When she flinched, he grinned. His queen did not have Elgiva’s taste for sexual adventure.

He rather missed Elgiva, but there were other women at court to satisfy him.

He rolled off his lady wife and watched, amused, as she slipped from the bed, drew on a robe, and stalked across the chamber and well out of his reach.

‘What were those letters I saw you poring over with the priest?’ he asked.

‘They are from my reeve in Exeter.’

‘Bring them to me. And light some candles. It is too dark in here.’ She lit a taper at the lamp, and one by one set all the candles in the room blazing.

‘You have not asked about your ailing son,’ she said.

‘What about him?’ He reached for the flagon beside the bed and poured himself a cup of wine. ‘His fever is gone, is it not?’ He tossed back the wine and poured more.

‘He tires easily. I am concerned for him.’

He grunted. The children were her concern, not his.

‘He goes to Headington next week with the rest of them,’ he said. ‘He will be well tended there. Bring me those scrolls.’

She fetched them, then began to dress herself while he sat on the edge of the bed, looking over each missive as he drank a second and third cup of wine. There were reports from her reeve, as she had said, as well as a petition from a host of Devonshire landholders urging Emma to visit her properties in the southwest.

Of course they would want her to make a royal progress to her dower lands. After all, it had been the southern nobles who had supported her as his bride in preference to Elgiva. They wished to curry her favour now, get her among them and fete her in the hope of solidifying her royal patronage. He’d had a letter from one of his Devonshire thegns some months ago suggesting just such a journey. He had dismissed it at the time. Now, though, he thought, fondling his cup as he considered the idea, things had changed.

If Duke Richard had allied himself with King Swein, then for the next four months all of England’s southern coast would be at risk of attack from ships striking across the Narrow Sea, and England’s fleet was too small to patrol that long sweep of coast. So what if he were to use Emma as a shield for the western shires? If he placed her in Devonshire and made certain that her brother knew of it, Richard would doubtless seek to protect Emma and her lands by urging his Danish allies to aim their strikes further east. That would leave him with only half of the coast to defend. It was perfect.

He tossed the scrolls onto the bed and began to dress.

‘You will make that progress through your dower lands,’ he told her. ‘The southern lords would take it amiss if you refuse them. I will send Ealdorman Ælfric and his men to escort you. And now I think on it, you may wish to stop at some of the shrines along your route and pray that your womb will soon be fruitful again.’

He watched her face as she weighed his words, and the consternation he read there amused him. Emma wanted a child. It was not obedience that had driven her to spread her legs for him today but the hope that his seed would take root within her. A son would garner her more lands, more money from his own purse, and even more support from the bishops than she had now. Once Emma had a son she would be a force to be reckoned with, something his damned bishops seemed unable to grasp. Well, they could hardly expect him to bed her if she wasn’t here, which would leave him free to seek his pleasure elsewhere. And Emma would have to wait a little longer for that child.

She made no reply to his suggestion but turned away from him, fingers busily braiding her hair. He pulled on his breecs and his tunic, and then noticed the small scroll that lay on the floor. Languidly he reached for it, glancing quickly at its lines of script.

And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand.

He stiffened, the menace in the words as palpable as a physical blow.

Christ, what fiend had given him this?

He tried to visualize the faces that had surrounded him in the palace yard, but he had taken too little notice of the rabble. He read again the baleful words – the Almighty’s curse upon Cain. As his mind quailed from the threat it carried, he felt, to his horror, a menacing cold come upon him.

He guessed what the chill portended, but surely he had to be wrong. He had freed himself of his brother’s vengeful shade when he had rid himself of the Danes who had schemed to destroy him. The fetch was gone! It could not come again to hound him. Even God would not be so cruel!

He steeled mind and body against the panic rising within him, but the growing cold clasped him in its unrelenting embrace, its icy tendrils reaching beneath his flesh to clutch at his heart. The scroll slipped from his hand, and his eyes, frozen wide, could only stare into a void that swirled and spun. All light fled the chamber, and in the darkness his brother’s glowering visage shivered before him like an unsteady flame, filling his soul with dread.

This time, though, he refused to succumb to the numbing terror. A rage sparked within him, bright as a glowing coal. He wanted to throttle the horror that faced him, to channel all his fear and fury into a lightning bolt of violence that would shatter this fiendish exhalation and send it back to hell. He struggled against the invisible bonds that held him, but he was spellbound, encased in a shroud of ice.

‘Why?’ he howled, wrenching the word out of the depths of his soul. ‘Speak, damn you! What do you want of me?’

There was no answer, and with a strangled curse and a supreme effort of will he clasped the wine cup and dashed it at his brother’s face. Edward’s shade neither moved nor spoke but merely stared at him with empty eyes while time seemed to stand still.

In those endless moments Æthelred felt a desperate weariness come over him, and a chilling heaviness in his chest, as if a stone lay upon it. He tried again to shut his eyes, but he could only stare into Edward’s bloodied face, until at last the shadow slowly receded and the chamber glowed with light and warmth again.

Freed at last from his brother’s grasp, he sank to the bed and wept.

Emma stood transfixed, her eyes flicking between her weeping lord and the red stain on the wall where the cup had shattered. How many eternities, she wondered, had passed while she stood here, bewildered and aghast, watching as the king struggled against some invisible threat that drove him past distraction into madness?

She began to breathe again as she realized that whatever had held him in thrall seemed to have set him free now, for even the king’s weeping had ceased. Yet she made no move to go to him. The memory of his petty cruelty was too fresh in her mind, and she could not be sure that he would not turn his rage upon her. So she stood, immobile, uncertain what to do.

‘I am cold,’ he whispered.

The words held a plea that she could not ignore, pulling her from her trance. She snatched up her robe and went to him, wrapping the thick fur and wool about his shoulders.

‘My lord, I fear you are ill,’ she said. His face was white and waxen, like a candle melted in the sun.

‘Burn it,’ he whispered.

She frowned. Burn what? She glanced at the parchments tumbled around him on the bed.

‘The scroll,’ he said, gesturing to something on the floor nearby. ‘Burn it!’

She spotted it then, a scrap the size of her finger. Was this the cause of his madness? Could so small a thing scatter the wits of a king? She picked it up, sorely tempted to unroll and read it first, but Æthelred was watching her with eyes sharp as blue steel. Obediently, she fed the scroll to the lamp’s flame.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘No business of yours. Just do what you’re told, damn you,’ he said, his words slurred from the wine.

She watched it burn, aware that it might hold the key to the puzzle that was Æthelred of England, and it was with a bitter pang of frustration that she dropped the last bit into the lamp and watched it curl to ash.

She heard him heave a great sigh, and she turned to look at him. Some colour had returned to his face, but the weariness had not left it. He looked sick and haggard, with dark crescents beneath his eyes. He was a man who slept but little, she knew, and not for the first time she wondered what dark dreams troubled his rest. Now she watched him slough off her robe and rise to his feet, but slowly, as if he were still burdened with a great weight.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said, his voice leaden, ‘you will deliver to me the letter for your brother, and you will begin preparations for your journey to Exeter.’

He left her then, his gait slow and heavy, while she stood in stunned silence, her ear attuned to the sound of his retreating footsteps.

When she was certain he was gone she went, trembling, to her great chair and sat down, steepling her hands in front of her as she considered what had just occurred. She knew little of men, for she had ever dwelt in a world of women. But she was beginning to know this hard and brutal man who was her husband and her king. And the more she knew him, the more she feared him.

Yet surely her fears were as nothing beside his. Æthelred, it seemed to her, feared everyone. That he mistrusted her did not surprise her. She was a foreigner, and in spite of her marriage vows, he could not be certain of her allegiance until she bore him a son, and perhaps not even then. She understood this. But Æthelred mistrusted and feared his counsellors, and even his own sons. He perceived Athelstan, in particular, as a dangerous rival and a threat. Had there been some warning about Athelstan in the missive that she had burned? She could not believe it. Athelstan had a pure heart, and God knew, there were any number of enemies who might threaten a king.

Must every ruler keep himself so separate from those around him, even those whom he should be able to trust? Or was there something in Æthelred’s very being that set him apart? It seemed to her that there was some fissure in this king’s soul from which suspicion rose like a malevolent cloud, working on him like a poison – and it was well-known that when a king waxed ill the entire realm suffered.

Like a cold fog, the stories she had heard about the death of Æthelred’s brother crept unbidden into her mind. A king had been murdered, and since that death England had been cursed with ill fortune. If Æthelred bore the blame, guilty or not, for the death of that king – and thus for the troubles that threatened the land – how many enemies he must have! And because she was bound to him body and soul, her fate wrapped within his, they were her enemies too, for all the years of her life.

She covered her face with her hands, and it seemed to her that the king’s own fear still blanketed the room, and that its essence settled upon her like a suffocating mist.

The final details for the queen’s removal to Exeter were all but completed. On the morning before her departure the ladies of Emma’s household sorted feverishly through her wardrobe, debating among themselves which items would be necessary for the journey. Emma, seated nearby at her work-table, was absorbed by a map that Father Martin had found for her, its surface smooth beneath her fingers. Far older than she was, it had been commissioned by King Alfred over a hundred years before to show the royal holdings in Wessex. With her index finger she traced a line from Winchester to Exeter, wondering at the distance that she must cover in the next few weeks. Her finger paused, though, when she spotted the royal manor of Corfe marked near the southern coast. Corfe – where Æthelred’s brother, King Edward, had met his death.