Читать книгу Shadow on the Crown - Patricia Bracewell - Страница 22

Emma, tucked into the royal wain with Wymarc and Margot, surveyed the sun-dappled Hampshire countryside – a vista framed by draperies that had been tied back to let in light and air. The view was the only thing pleasant about this leg of the journey, for the thick cushions lining the seat beneath her did little to absorb the shock of the wagon’s jolting passage along the deeply rutted road. She could not decide which was more uncomfortable – travel aboard a heaving longship or inside a teeth-jarring wheeled box. The box, at any rate, was always dry, but the heavy, cumbersome vehicle moved so slowly behind its plodding oxen that Emma was convinced it would have been faster to walk.

She was relieved that this long trek to the royal seat of Winchester was nearly over. They would spend tonight in an abbey, and tomorrow, escorted by a delegation of clergy and prominent citizens, she would enter the city that was to be her new home. Father Martin knew Winchester well, and he had described it as a beautiful walled town set amid folds of forest, field, and pasture in the king’s heartland of Wessex. Yet, as she looked out at all the different shades of green below a wide blue-and-white sky, she felt a pang of longing for the sea. Here there would be no shore where she could ride with the salt spray upon her face, no white cliffs, not even the call of seabirds that had sometimes filled the skies above Canterbury.

Just then the road curved, and for a few moments she could see Æthelred mounted on the horse that had been her wedding gift to him – a dappled grey stallion that Richard had helped her choose. She had begged to be allowed to ride with the king today but had been refused for a host of reasons that his steward had tediously itemized for her. And so it was the king’s favourite, Elgiva, who rode beside him, her skirts pulled up across her knees to reveal shapely legs that her thin hose did little to hide.

It did not surprise Emma to learn that it was Æthelred’s custom to have favourites among the ladies of the court. It was something her brother had warned might happen, and he had told her that she would be foolish to show any displeasure because of it. It was a king’s prerogative, he had said.

Emma would have found her husband’s prerogative far easier to live with if he had chosen someone other than Elgiva for his attentions. She had learned very quickly the root cause of Elgiva’s thinly disguised contempt: the Lady of Northampton had herself hoped to wed the king and as she could not punish Æthelred for spurning her, she chose to turn her malice upon Emma, the usurper.

There were a thousand ways to sow discord among a household of women, and Elgiva seemed determined to utilize every one. Haughty glances, unkind remarks, baseless rumours, and spiteful tales had led to a clear divide between Emma’s English and Norman attendants, and she despaired of ever finding a way to repair it. Elgiva’s blatant efforts to attract the king’s eye did not help.

Even beyond that, though, there was something about Elgiva’s nature that troubled Emma. She could not make out if it was the careless cruelty of a spoiled child or if something darker lay concealed beneath the fair skin and fine eyes. She wondered that the king did not see it. Or perhaps he did, and that was what intrigued him the most – darkness drawn to darkness.

For although she still knew very little about Æthelred as a man, she knew that across his soul lay a shadow that she could not fathom. He was very much afraid, this king. She had seen it at their wedding feast, and in the three months that she had shared his bed, he had been troubled by dark dreams. She had sometimes wakened in the night to find the bedchamber bright with candles and the king slowly pacing, murmuring to himself – whether prayers or curses she could not say.

She wondered what he saw there, in the long watches of the night, but she did not have the courage to attempt to probe the dark visions in his mind – whether shadows of memory or of things yet to be. Æthelred had barred her from his private thoughts, and even from his presence, as surely as if he had built a wall between them – or built a wall around her, for she was more prisoner than wife or queen.

She saw him only in the formal feasting in the hall or in the strained, cold silence of their bed. In Canterbury she had not been allowed to ride or hunt with him – for fear of her safety, she had been told. She was no more than a foreign hostage – mistrusted by her lord. She was watched constantly by the women who served her, and every missive she sent or received from Normandy passed first through the hands of the king.

She woke each day dreading that some ill tidings would reach the king about her brother or about some monstrous Viking raid that could be laid to Richard’s account. And what, she wondered, would Æthelred do to his hostage then? Up to now those fears had been groundless, but the sea lanes would be open for many weeks yet, and until winter storms kept the dragon ships from venturing onto England’s shores, she, like the king, would not rest easily at night.

She gazed out at the green land that was so beautiful and told herself that she must not despair. Yet she doubted that she would ever feel that she belonged in this place, or that she could ever care for the dark king who ruled it.

The road curved again, and again she saw Æthelred with Elgiva beside him, her black hair tangling in the breeze.

‘I wonder,’ she said aloud, ‘if the king confides in Elgiva, and if she is truly fond of him.’

Wymarc’s mouth twisted in an uncharacteristic scowl.

‘Elgiva is fond of no one but herself,’ she said. ‘Come to that, the only person who loves her more than she loves herself is that old witch Groa. I expect she thinks that Elgiva pisses holy water.’

Margot shot her a reproachful glance. ‘That will do,’ she said.

‘But it is true,’ Wymarc insisted. ‘Groa worships the girl. Can you not see it? I think Elgiva must have cast a spell on the woman, and on the king as well, come to that.’

‘Do not judge Groa too severely,’ Margot reproved her. ‘If she loves the girl overmuch it is hardly to be wondered at. Elgiva has been the only bright thing in that poor woman’s life.’

Wymarc looked, astonished, at Margot.

‘Why do you say that? What do you know about Groa that we do not?’

Margot pursed her lips, glanced from Wymarc to Emma, and then heaved a little sigh.

‘When Groa was a young woman she was taken in a raid from her home somewhere in the far north. Her captor was one of Ælfhelm’s thegns, and he kept Groa as his concubine. She bore him six children, all of whom died before they were a year old. Her man died, too, while Groa was pregnant with her last child, and when that babe died at her breast she was given Elgiva to suckle.’ She sighed again. ‘Since then the girl has been her all in all.’

Poor Groa, Emma thought. She was a grim-faced creature, as hard, cold, and sharp as a sword to all but Elgiva. Did bitterness and loss truly do that to a woman? Must she become hard when misfortune struck, so that she did not break?

Wymarc, too, seemed subdued by this glimpse into the life of Elgiva’s old nurse, for she was silent for some time, gazing out at the passing fields of new grain.

‘I grant you that she has suffered,’ Wymarc muttered, ‘but Groa does her mistress no service by defending her even when she knows Elgiva is in the wrong. I’ll warrant that Elgiva does what she pleases because she has always been allowed to do so. Look at her now, riding next to the king with her skirt hitched up almost to her waist. It is not seemly.’

‘If the king bids Elgiva ride with him,’ Emma murmured, ‘she cannot easily refuse him.’

And if the king were to command even more from Elgiva – what then? Emma did not believe that Ealdorman Ælfhelm would sanction an illicit relationship between his daughter and the king. Elgiva was much too valuable in the marriage market to waste. But Ælfhelm had gone to his lands in the north, and if the king wished to bed Elgiva, there was no one to stop him.

Almost unconsciously, her hand pressed against the belt cinched tightly at her waist. Her womb had not yet quickened with the king’s child, and it had been three months. She could not help but think of her own family history. Her mother had borne six children while she was the unwed consort of a duke whose Frankish wife had died young, childless, and brokenhearted. If Elgiva were to seduce Æthelred from Emma’s bed, it might be Emma’s lot to remain childless. And without a son to protect her, she would be at the mercy of the king and his sons.

She had tried to befriend them – the three eldest – after their return from their eight-week exile at St Albans. The eldest, Athelstan, had treated her efforts with a frosty disdain that occasionally warmed into chilly courtesy. Sometimes in the hall he would not bother to disguise his dislike. He would stare coldly at her, as if she were some outlandish creature from another world – which, in some ways, she supposed she was.

His brother Ecbert, a year younger than she was, did not seem to know what to do whenever he found himself confronted with her. He was a genial fellow by nature, his normal expression a lopsided grin. Whenever he was in her presence, though, he took care to rearrange his face into a frown. He could not maintain it for long, though, and she sometimes caught him observing her with shy interest.

It was Edmund who seemed to resent her the most. He was fourteen summers old, but a dour lad who seemed far older. He never greeted her with anything but a scowl, and he never spoke to her if he could help it – and then only in monosyllables.

She had far better luck with Æthelred’s youngest children. To her surprise and relief they seemed to accept her with dispassion, if not enthusiasm, looking to her as if she were just another one of the many functionaries who oversaw their schooling and daily care. She thought that they could not have been very close to their mother, for they never spoke of her, and even the girls did not seem to miss her.

There was one other child – Mathilda, the youngest and barely two years old – whom she had not met, for the girl had been installed in a convent shortly after her mother died. It was not unusual for the daughters of kings and wealthy magnates to be consecrated to God, but Emma thought it hard that this child would have to live such a circumscribed life from so early an age. She could not imagine giving up a daughter of her own to such a life.

None of Æthelred’s children would be at Winchester just yet. The eldest had left on business of their own, and the youngest had been sent to some estate in the country. The purpose, ostensibly, was to give the king and his bride time alone together, unencumbered by the children of his first wife. Emma had laughed when she heard that, for she liked the king’s younger children far better than she liked the king.

In August, though, the children would return to Winchester. When they did, she must welcome them as a mother and a friend. If she could not give the king a child, then she must befriend her stepchildren, because her own safety – her very life – might one day lie in their hands. She was confident that she could win the affections of the girls and the youngest boys. It was the king’s three eldest sons – Athelstan, Ecbert, and Edmund – who presented the real challenge. Somehow she had to convince them that she was not a threat. How was she to do that, though, when everyone knew that her whole purpose was to give birth to a son who would be their rival for the king’s affection and largesse – and perhaps, one day, for the throne itself?