Читать книгу The Price of Blood - Patricia Bracewell - Страница 16

March 1006

Calne, Wiltshire

The springtime sun was westering when Æthelred, satisfied with the day’s sport, beckoned his falconer. Before transferring his prize gyrfalcon from his own leather-clad arm to the keeper’s, he spoke a few soft words to the bird. The hawking season was nearly done, and this one had earned his summer’s rest.

All his raptors had done well today – seven cranes brought down. Clean kills, every one.

As he mounted his horse, one of his retainers gave a shout and pointed to a rider who had just topped a nearby ridge and was moving slowly towards them.

‘Someone from Calne,’ Æthelred said, ‘although whatever news he brings does not look to be urgent.’

Soon enough he saw who it was – Eadric of Shrewsbury – another kind of raptor that he had loosed months ago and who was now come back to the lure. What prey, he wondered, had Eadric brought to ground? He had set the young thegn a delicate task, and now he was about to find out if he had been successful.

He gestured to his men to follow at a distance while he spurred his horse towards Eadric. The journey back to the manor would take the better part of an hour, and he and Eadric had much to discuss.

As he drew near to the younger man, he studied Eadric’s handsome, bearded face with its thin, sharp nose and high brow. He’d chosen wisely with this one. Eadric’s dark good looks inspired trust, and he radiated a pleasing charm that worked on women and men alike.

At a glance, no one would guess how very dangerous he was. Eadric, he’d found, was the perfect tool – efficient, reserved, thorough, and, when necessary, casually ruthless.

‘I hope you met with success,’ he said as Eadric fell in beside him. ‘Word has reached me recently that Ælfhelm is planning to bestow his daughter upon a Danish warlord. Can you confirm it?’

‘Indeed, my lord,’ Eadric replied. His eyes, black as a raven’s wing, met Æthelred’s with brutal frankness.

‘You’re certain?’

‘Aye. For some time now, a man who serves Lord Ælfhelm has been carrying messages back and forth across the Danish sea. It is always the same man and he always takes ship from Gainesborough. That was where I spoke with him but seven days ago.’

‘And he told you who is to claim Elgiva and all her lands?’

‘He told me what he knew – that she is to wed someone very close to the Danish king.’

Æthelred gnawed on his lower lip. For the right price, a man might admit such a thing even if it were not true. He wanted assurance, beyond any doubt, that Ælfhelm was planning such an alliance. The man’s vague excuse for missing the Easter court because of pressing matters in Mercia rang as false as a whore’s promises of love. Still, he wanted to be sure.

‘How can you be certain that he told you the truth?’

‘I bartered the life of his wife and her two whelps for the information,’ Eadric said. ‘It took a little bloodletting to get him to speak, but he cooperated eventually. And when, after the first babe was dead and I could get no more out of the vermin but howls, I felt certain that he had told me everything he knew. I had to kill them all, of course, in the end.’

Æthelred grunted. Treachery carried a high price.

‘How long, think you, before Ælfhelm’s suspicion is aroused?’

Eadric shrugged. ‘Some weeks, at least. Anyone who asks after them will be told that they took ship for Denmark and have not returned.’

‘Good,’ he said. It gave him time to strike before his prey grew wary. ‘This marriage must not go forward.’

His greatest fear was that, with a Danish warlord at his side and with the support of King Swein, Ælfhelm would grow bold enough to attempt to wrest all the land north of the Humber from English rule. It had happened before. Fifty years ago Eric Bloodaxe had styled himself King of Jorvik, and although the upstart Viking had been driven from his makeshift throne, the memory of that Norse kingdom on English soil was still fresh and alluring in the minds of the men of Northumbria and northern Mercia. How they chafed under the rule of the ancient kings of Wessex!

‘Will you bind the lady to someone loyal to yourself instead?’ Eadric asked, his eyes alight with interest. ‘Someone who will stand with you against any Danish assault?’

Bind her! Æthelred allowed himself a grim smile. He would like to bind Elgiva in chains and shut her in some island tower so that he would never have to think on her again. She was like a lodestone that her father was using to draw men of iron into his plots against his king. Even now, in Eadric’s question, he could hear the man’s unspoken yearning to be the one to claim the lady’s hand – and wealth. But to wed the cunning Elgiva to any man with a thirst for power was to create yet another enemy.

He should have wed the girl himself, bound the restless northerners to him with blood ties as he had done with his first marriage. But he had chosen instead to forge an alliance with the Norman duke. He had taken Emma to wife hoping to deprive Danish raiders of the friendly ports that welcomed them along the Narrow Sea within striking distance of England’s coast. He had sealed the alliance by giving Emma a crown and a son – all for naught. His southern shores were still beset by Vikings, while in the north men plotted against him.

‘There is no man,’ he said at last, ‘with whom I would trust the Lady Elgiva.’ He had a sudden vivid memory of Elgiva’s little bow of a mouth and the things that she could do with it – an agreeable memory, but alarming as well. ‘She is ambitious and shrewd,’ he muttered, ‘and she would harry her husband until he set all of England at her feet.’

‘Then can you not place her in a convent?’ Eadric suggested. ‘Bestow her lands on the nuns at Shaftesbury or Wilton?’

‘Her father would never agree to such a fate for his precious daughter. And if any man had a mind to wed her, convent walls would not prevent it. My own father got two children on a nun. No, a vow of chastity and even abbey walls made of stone would not deter a man determined to claim such a prize, and they certainly would not stop a Danish warlord.’

Both men rode in silence for a space, then Æthelred gave voice to the purpose that had been forming in his mind from the moment that he had received Elgiva’s plea for deliverance from a Danish marriage.

‘Ælfhelm has become too powerful,’ he said. ‘He has forged a web of conspirators throughout Mercia and into Northumbria. Nay, not a web but a hydra, and I must sever every head if I am to put an end to the plots. Were you able to learn the names of the men who have been a party to this enterprise?’

And for the first time, Eadric disappointed him.

‘Forgive me, my lord, but I could not,’ he said. ‘Surely, though, Ælfhelm’s sons must know his plans.’

Æthelred nodded. He would discover what the sons knew when they joined the court at Easter. His more immediate concern was Ælfhelm. He must be dealt with efficiently and – for now – in secret.

‘Did you learn aught else from your Gainesborough messenger?’

‘He carried nothing in writing. I could only wring from him the words he was meant to deliver to Ælfhelm: Look to Lammas Day.’

Lammas Day. August first, when men would be busy with the harvest and reluctant to answer a call to defend villages and fields that were not their own.

Still, it was months away. There was time yet to sever the bond between Ælfhelm and the Danes.

‘Ælfhelm has ignored my summons to the Easter council. I would have you make certain that he never attends another one.’ He cast a quick glance at Eadric, who was cocking an interested eyebrow. ‘You are newly come into your inheritance,’ he continued, ‘and Ælfhelm is your ealdorman. Feast him. Flatter him. Invite him to your hall and make sure he brings his daughter with him.’

He glanced again at Eadric’s face, but – as he’d expected – he saw no shadow of hesitation or distaste.

‘What of the girl?’ Eadric asked.

‘Take her, but do not harm her. It was she who warned me of her father’s treachery, and that has earned her some grace. I will have to send her away from England, to Hibernia perhaps, where she is less likely to stir up mischief.’

Although, he thought with a frown, even in Hibernia the lady could be a threat. He would have to give more thought as to how he would provide for Elgiva. The fates of her father and brothers, though, were now sealed. The hydra that threatened him would lose three of its heads, at the least.