The Price of Blood
Patricia Bracewell

Copyright

Harper

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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Copyright © Patricia Bracewell 2015

Maps © Matt Brown 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover photographs © Dave Wall / Arcangel Images (medieval interior); Gordon Crabb / Alison Eldred (woman)

Lines from William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum, The History of English Kings Vol. 1 edited by Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom (1998) are reproduced by kind permission of Oxford University Press

Patricia Bracewell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

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Source ISBN: 9780008104603

Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008104597

Version: 2015-05-07

Dedication

For Ron and Dot

Who share my earliest memories

In the Year of our Lord 979 Æthelred, son of Edgar … came to the throne … His life is said to have been cruel at the outset, pitiable in mid-course, and disgraceful in its ending …

He was hounded by the shade of his brother, demanding terribly the price of blood. Who could count how often he summoned his army, how often he ordered ships to be built, how often he called his nobles together from every quarter, and nothing ever came of it?

The evil could not be lulled to rest … for enemies were always sprouting out of Denmark like a hydra’s heads, and nowhere was it possible to take precautions …

– The History of the English Kings

William of Malmesbury

Twelfth Century

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Dramatis Personae

Maps

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Glossary

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

A Q&A with Patricia Bracewell

About the Author

Also by Patricia Bracewell

About the Publisher

Dramatis Personae

*Indicates a Fictional Character

Anglo-Saxon England, 1006–1012

Royal Family

Æthelred II, King of England

Emma, Queen of England

Children of the English king, in birth order:

Athelstan

Ecbert

Edmund

Edrid

Edwig

Edgar

Edyth

Ælfgifu (Ælfa)

Wulfhilde (Wulfa)

Mathilda

Edward

Emma’s Household

Aldyth, niece of Ealdorman Ælfhelm

Elgiva, daughter of Ealdorman Ælfhelm

*Father Martin

*Hilde, granddaughter of Ealdorman Ælfric

*Margot

Wymarc

Robert, Wymarc’s son

Leading Ecclesiastics

Ælfheah, Archbishop of Canterbury

Ælfhun, Bishop of London

Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, Archbishop of Jorvik

Leading Nobles

Ælfhelm, Ealdorman of Northumbria

Ufegeat, Ælfhelm’s son

Wulfheah, Ælfhelm’s son (Wulf)

*Alric, his retainer

Ælfric, Ealdorman of Hampshire

Godwine, Ealdorman of Lindsey

Leofwine, Ealdorman of Western Mercia

Eadric of Shrewsbury

Godwin, Wulfnoth’s son

Morcar of the Five Boroughs

Siferth of the Five Boroughs

Thurbrand of Holderness

Ulfkytel of East Anglia

Uhtred of Northumberland

Wulfnoth of Sussex

Normandy

Duke Richard II, Emma’s brother

Duchess Judith

Dowager Duchess Gunnora, Emma’s mother

Robert, Archbishop of Rouen, Emma’s brother

The Danes

Swein Forkbeard, King of Denmark

Harald, son of Swein

Cnut, son of Swein

Hemming

Thorkell

Tostig

Prologue

Shrove Tuesday, March 1006

Calne, Wiltshire

Æthelred knelt, his head clutched in his hands, bowed beneath the weight of his crown and his sins. Somewhere above, the vesper bells rang to mark the call to evening prayer, and at the very moment of their tolling he felt his limbs tremble, convulsed by a force beyond his control.

The familiar, hated lethargy settled over him, and though he strove to keep his head down and his eyes shut, a will far stronger than his own pulled his gaze upwards. The air before him thickened and turned as black and rippling as the windswept surface of a mere. Pain gnawed at his chest, and he shivered with cold and apprehension as the world around him vanished. Sounds, too, faded to nothing and he knew only the cold, the pain, and the flickering darkness before him that stretched and grew into the shape of a man.

Or what had been a man once. Wounds gaped like a dozen mouths at throat and breast, gore streaked the shredded garments crimson, and the menacing face wore Death’s gruesome pallor. His murdered brother’s shade drew towards him, an exhalation from the gates of heaven or the mouth of hell – he could not say which. Not a word passed its lips, but he sensed a malevolence that flowed from the dead to the living, and he shrank back in fear and loathing.

Yet he could not look away. For long moments the vision held him in thrall until, as it began to fade, he became aware of another figure – of a shadow behind the shadow. Dark, indistinct, shrouded in gloom, it hovered briefly in the thickened air and then, like the other, it was gone.

Released from the spell, he could hear once again the pealing of the vesper bells and the murmur of voices at prayer, could smell the honeyed scent of candles and, beneath it, the rank stench of his own sweat. The golden head dropped once more into cupped hands, but now it was heavy with fear and tormented by a terrible foreboding.

A.D. 1006 This year Ælfheah was consecrated Archbishop; Wulfheah and Ufegeat were deprived of sight; Ealdorman Ælfhelm was slain …

– The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Chapter One

March 1006

Near Calne, Wiltshire

Queen Emma checked her white mare as it crested a hill above the vast royal estate where the king had settled for the Lenten season. Behind her a company of thirty men, women, and children, all of them heavily cloaked against a biting wind, rested their mounts after the long climb. In front of her, in the middle distance below the hill, the slate roof and high, gilded gables of the king’s great hall dwarfed the buildings and palisade that encircled it. The hall marked their journey’s end, and Emma looked on it with relief, for it was late in the day and her people were weary.

As she studied the road ahead, a single shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds massed in folds across the sky to slant a golden light upon the fields below. The furrowed land shimmered under a thin film of green – new shoots that promised a good harvest in the months to come, if only God would be merciful.

But God, Emma thought, seemed to have turned His face against England. For two years now, promising springs had been followed by rain-plagued summers so that food and fodder were scarce. This past winter, Famine and Death had stalked the land, and if the coming season’s yield was not bountiful, yet more of the poorest in the realm would die.

She had done what she could, distributing alms to those she could reach and adding her voice to the faithful’s desperate pleas for God’s mercy. Now, as the golden light lingered on the green vale below, she prayed that her latest assault on heaven – the pilgrimage she had made to the resting places of England’s most beloved saints – might at last have secured God’s blessings on Æthelred’s realm.

She glanced around, looking past the horse litter that bore her son and his wet nurse to find her three young stepdaughters. Wulfhilde, just eight winters old, was asleep in the arms of the servant who rode with her. Ælfa sat upon her mount slumped within the folds of her mantle. Edyth, the eldest at twelve, stared dully towards the manor hall, her face drawn and pale beneath her fur-lined hood.

Emma chided herself for pushing them so hard, for they had been on the road since daybreak. She turned in her saddle to lead the group forward, but as she did so the wind made a sudden shift to strike her full in the face. Her mount sidled nervously, and as she struggled to control the mare another fierce gust pushed at her like a massive hand that would urge her away.

She felt a curious sense of unease, a pricking at the back of her neck, and she squinted against the wind, searching for the source of her disquiet. On the mast atop the manor’s bell tower, the dragon banner of Wessex heralded the king’s presence within. He would be there to welcome her – although not with anything resembling love or even affection, for he had none of either to give. Æthelred was more king than man – as ruthless and cold as a bird of prey. Sometimes she wondered if he had ever loved anyone – even himself.

She did not relish the coming reunion with her lord, but that alone did not explain her sudden sense of foreboding.

As she hesitated, her son began to wail, his piercing cry an urgent demand that she could not ignore. She shook off her disquiet, for surely it must be her own weariness that assailed her. She nodded to her armed hearth troops to take the lead, and then followed them down the hill.

When she rode through the manor gates she saw a knot of retainers making for the kitchens behind the great hall, one of them carrying the standard of the ætheling Edmund. She puzzled over his presence here while a groom helped her dismount. Edmund had accompanied his elder brothers Athelstan and Ecbert to London in February, charged with the task of repairing the city’s fortifications and the great bridge that straddled the Thames. All three of them were to remain there until they joined the court at Cookham for the Easter feast. What, then, was Edmund doing here today?

The anxiety that had vexed her on the hill returned, but she had duties to perform before she could satisfy her curiosity. She led her stepdaughters and attendants into her quarters, where she found a fire blazing in the central hearth, the lime-washed walls hung with embroidered linens, and her great, curtained bed standing ready at the far end of the room. Three servants were setting up beds for the king’s daughters, and a fourth stepped forward to take Emma’s hooded mantle and muddy boots.

She slipped out of the cloak, then looked about the chamber for the women of her household who had been sent ahead and had, she guessed, supervised all these preparations.

‘Where are Margot and Wymarc?’ she asked, still unnerved by that moment of unease on the heights above the manor.

Before anyone could respond, Wymarc entered the chamber with a quick step, and Emma, relieved, drew her into an embrace. They had been parted for only a week, yet it seemed far longer. Wymarc was a bright, comforting presence in her household – and had been since the day they left Normandy together for England. Four years ago that was – four years since Emma stood at the door of Canterbury Cathedral as the peace-weaving bride of the English king, with Wymarc looking on from only half a step away.

She had missed Wymarc this past week.

‘Margot has taken Robert down to the millpool,’ Wymarc said, ‘to look for ducklings.’ She shook her head. ‘It is a marvel that a woman of her years can keep pace with my young son, yet she does it.’

Emma smiled, imagining Margot, as small and cheerful as a wren, walking hand in hand with a child not quite two winters old. Children, though, had ever been the centre of Margot’s world. Healer and midwife, she had been Emma’s guide since birth – and the nearest thing to a mother that Emma had in England.

She glanced at Wulfa and Ælfa, who were already shedding their mud-spattered cyrtels for fresh garments.

‘The girls will be glad to see Margot,’ she said. ‘Ælfa took a fall this morning and wants a salve for the cut on her knee. And Edyth’ – she nodded towards one of the beds where Æthelred’s eldest daughter was curled up tightly, knees to chest – ‘yesterday she bled for the first time and she’s feeling wretched, of course, and swears that she’s ill. She’ll listen to no words of reassurance from me, but I expect that Margot can persuade her that she’s not about to die.’

At this the expression in Wymarc’s usually merry brown eyes grew guarded, and the warning glance she cast towards the girls told Emma that something was wrong but that an explanation would have to wait until they could speak privately.

She changed quickly into clean stockings, linen shift, and a dark grey woollen cyrtel, then she drew Wymarc aside.

‘What is amiss?’ she asked, taking the silken headrail that Wymarc was holding out to her. ‘Is it something to do with Edmund? I saw his bannermen as I came into the yard.’

‘I pray it is not true,’ Wymarc whispered, ‘but there is a rumour that one of the æthelings has died in London.’ She clutched Emma’s hand. ‘Emma, I do not know who it is.’

The headrail slipped, forgotten, from Emma’s fingers. She stared at Wymarc and had to will herself to breathe. Edmund had been with Athelstan and Ecbert in London. Was it possible that one of them was dead?

Holy Mary, she prayed, let it not be Athelstan.

She had been on God’s earth for nineteen summers, had been wife and queen for four of them, and had borne a babe who was heir to England’s crown. In all that time she had loved but one man and, God forgive her, that man was not her royal husband but his eldest son.

Clasping her hands together to stop their trembling, she pressed them against her mouth and shut her eyes.

‘God have mercy,’ she whispered, then looked to Wymarc. ‘I must go to the king.’

Her thoughts flew back to that moment on the hill above the manor and the foreboding that had shaken her. Had she sensed some trouble in the air then – a portent of loss greater than she could bear to imagine?

Sweet Virgin, she prayed again, let it not be Athelstan.

She took long, slow breaths and walked with a measured step to disguise the fear that clutched at her heart, to try not to think of how wretched the world would be if Athelstan were not in it.

Nodding to the guards at the entrance to the great hall, she slipped inside. Torches flamed in their sockets along the walls and a fire roared in the central pit, but the vast chamber, which should have been busy with preparations for the evening meal, was all but empty. Æthelred sat on the dais in his great chair with Edmund kneeling before him. The king was bent forward, his silver-streaked, tawny hair contrasting with his son’s darker, dishevelled locks. The king’s steward, Hubert, stood to one side, dictating something to a scribe; a gaggle of servants hovered nearby looking frightened.

Filled with dread, Emma walked silently and swiftly to the dais and sank into the chair placed beside the king’s. Æthelred did not even mark her entrance, so absorbed was he in what Edmund was saying. Edmund’s face, she saw with despair, was wet with tears, and she forced herself to listen to him in silence, swallowing the urgent query that was on her lips.

‘It came on suddenly, and he was in agony from the start,’ he said in a voice laced with grief. ‘The leeches gave him a purgative, but that only seemed to make him worse. They bled him, to try to release the evil humours, but even I could see that they thought it was futile. A corruption had taken hold inside, they said, and only a miracle would spare him. They tried to dose him with poppy juice to ease his pain, but what little he swallowed he spewed back again. It was as if some devil would not allow him any succour, would not even let him sleep. His suffering was terrible, my lord. He did not deserve such torment.’

Edmund’s voice broke, but he took a breath, mastered his grief, and went on.

‘On the second morning the bishop arrived with the relics of Saint Erkenwald and a clutch of priests. They prayed for a miracle, but by midday I was begging God to put an end to his agony.’ He drew a heavy breath. ‘That prayer, at least, was answered. I am come to you straight from Ecbert’s deathbed, my lord. Athelstan insisted that you hear it from one of us and no other.’

Emma dropped her head into her hands, unable to keep back her tears. She mourned for Ecbert, and she grieved for Athelstan, who had lost his dearest companion. Yet even as she wept for pity, she murmured a prayer of thanks. Athelstan was alive.

‘Why do you weep, lady?’ Edmund’s harsh voice flayed her. ‘Your own son thrives, does he not? And Ecbert was nothing to you.’

She looked into the grief-ravaged face of her stepson, unsurprised by his words. At seventeen he was a grown man, but even as a youth he had regarded her with resentment and suspicion.

‘I am no monster, Edmund,’ she said. ‘I grieve for Ecbert as I would for the death of any of my husband’s children.’

‘Ecbert would not want your—’

‘Edmund.’ Æthelred’s voice silenced his son.

For once Emma was grateful for the rigid control that the king wielded over his children. She had no wish to wrangle with Edmund. Not today.

The king was gazing into the middle distance, his eyes unfocused and empty.

‘On what day,’ he asked, ‘and at what hour did Ecbert die?’

‘Two days ago,’ Edmund replied. ‘Shrove Tuesday, just before vespers.’

Æthelred closed his eyes, and the hand that he lifted to his brow trembled. Emma could only guess at what he was feeling. Anguish for the suffering of his son? Anger at a pitiless God? She wanted to comfort him, and she would have reached out to touch his arm, but his next words checked her.

‘I beg you, lady, to leave us to our grief. Send my daughters to me. I would tell them of their brother’s death.’

It was as if he had struck her a physical blow – a terse reminder that she was an outsider, a foreign queen who could be beckoned or dismissed at the king’s whim, like a bit of carved wood on a game board.

Without another word, she left the hall.

Grieving and wounded, she returned to her apartments and, as the king had bid her, sent his daughters to him. Then she drew her son from his nurse’s lap. Edward nuzzled contentedly against her shoulder, happily fingering the thick, pale braid of her hair. As she paced restlessly about the room, finding comfort in her son’s warm, milky scent, Edmund’s words and the venomous look he had turned upon her played in her head like a bad dream.

His anger, she feared, was directed as much towards her son as towards her. She had watched it grow and fester for more than a year now – ever since Æthelred had named Edward heir to his throne. In disinheriting the sons borne to him by his first wife, the king had pitted all her stepsons against her child. Brothers against brother; a host of Cains against her tiny Abel.

Athelstan, for her sake she suspected, kept his brothers’ resentment in check. But how long could he continue to do so?

Royal brothers had been murdered before this for the sake of a crown. Æthelred himself had been but ten summers old when his half-brother, King Edward, had been slain. No one had been punished for that murder. Instead, certain men close to the newly crowned young Æthelred had prospered.

How many powerful men, she mused uneasily, had interests that would be ill served if her son should one day take the throne? How many of the elder æthelings’ supporters could be called on to dispose of a troublesome half-brother for the benefit of the sons of Æthelred’s first wife?

The thought turned her limbs to liquid, and she had to sit down. She rested her cheek against Edward’s bright silken hair and held him close. He was her treasure, her whole reason for being. His life was in her hands, and Ecbert’s death was a reminder that even for a royal son, life was perilous.

‘I promise you,’ she whispered, ‘that I will protect you from all your enemies.’ Then she thought of Athelstan, alone in London and grieving for his brother, and she added, ‘Even those whom I love.’

Chapter Two

March 1006

Calne, Wiltshire

The next day dawned sunless, heavy with the threat of rain. As Æthelred performed the prescribed rituals of mourning for his dead son, his mind was filled with thoughts as black as the sullen skies – thoughts that sprang not from grief, but from rage.

Grief, he told himself, was a sentiment of little use to him. Better to howl than to weep. Better to channel his fury towards a pitiless God and the vengeful shade of a murdered king than to mourn for the innocent dead.

Both heaven and hell, he was certain, had cursed him – the bitter fruit of ancient sins. He had witnessed the murder of his brother, the king; had raised neither voice nor hand to prevent it; had taken a crown that should not have been his. For these wrongs his brother’s cruel shadow continued to torment him, despite all that he had done to lay the loathsome spirit to rest.

Ecbert’s death was yet another sign that Edward’s hand – or God’s – was raised against him. Shrines and churches, prayers and penance had not bought him peace. He was still dogged by misfortune.

Now he understood that the price of forgiveness was far too high. God and Edward demanded his kingdom and his crown, and that was a price he would not pay.

As he knelt within the cold heart of the royal chapel, he made a solemn vow. He would defy heaven; he would defy hell, too, and anything else living or dead that sought to break his grasp upon his throne. For he was of the Royal House of Cerdic. Never had his forebears relinquished their claim to kingship until the moment that each took his final breath, and neither would he.

If a king was not a king, then he was nothing.

By midafternoon the storm had dissipated, but when the household assembled for the day’s main meal Æthelred still seethed with a brooding rage that he directed towards the God who had turned against him. He took his place upon the dais and nodded brusquely to Abbot Ælfweard, seated at his right hand, to give the blessing. A commotion at the bottom of the hall, though, drew his attention to the screens passage. There, a tall figure stepped through the curtained doorway. Cloaked all in black and with the long white beard of an Old Testament prophet, Archbishop Wulfstan strode with measured step towards the high table.

Here, then, Æthelred thought, was God’s answer to his earlier vow of defiance. Like some carrion crow, Wulfstan – Bishop of Worcester, Archbishop of Jorvik – had come to croak God’s Word at him.

Like the rest of his household, he stood up as the archbishop advanced. But Wulfstan’s progress was pointedly slow, and he leaned heavily upon his crosier as he made his way to the dais, sketching crosses in the air over the bowed heads of the assembly.

The old man was weary, Æthelred thought, unusual for Wulfstan, who usually had the vigour of a rutting stallion. A vigour that he dedicated to his king’s service, he admitted grudgingly, as well as to God’s. What was it that had driven him so hard today? Was it Ecbert’s death, or did he bring news of some further calamity?

Emma, he saw, was already rounding the table to present the welcome cup before kneeling in front of the archbishop for his blessing. Wulfstan passed his crosier and then the cup to a waiting servant, took the queen’s hands in his, and bent his head close to hers to speak a private word. Æthelred watched, irritated. Wulfstan had always been Emma’s champion; indeed, most of England’s high clergy had been seduced by his pious queen.

Beside him Abbot Ælfweard, who knew his place well enough, scuttled off the dais to make way for his superior, and Æthelred knelt in his turn as the archbishop offered a prayer over his royal head. When the prelate had cleansed his hands and the prayer of thanksgiving had been said at last, the company sat down to eat.

After glancing with distaste at the Lenten fare of eel soup and bread that was set before him, Æthelred pushed the food away and turned to the archbishop. May as well hear what the man had come to say, he thought, and be done with it.

‘Do you come to console me, Archbishop?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘Do you bring words of comfort from the Almighty that will recompense me for the death of a son?’

Wulfstan, too, pushed aside his bowl.

‘I bring no consolation, my lord, for I have none to give,’ he said, and there was not even the merest hint of compassion in the archbishop’s cold gaze. ‘Thus says the Lord,’ he went on, ‘your sons shall die and your daughters shall perish of famine. None shall be spared among them, unless you repent of the wickedness of your hearts.’ His grey eyes glinted in the candlelight like chips of steel, fierce and bright. ‘I am come, my lord, because I am afraid – for this kingdom and its people.’ He paused and then he added, ‘And I fear for its king.’

Fear of God’s wrath. Of course – it was Wulfstan’s favourite theme, the wickedness of men and the need for repentance. But God used men to flay those whom He would punish, and it was the men whom Æthelred feared, although he did not say it.

‘Your kingdom is mired in sin, my lord,’ Wulfstan’s cold, implacable voice went on, ‘and even innocents will suffer for it. The death of the ætheling and the famine that we have endured – these are signs from the Almighty. God’s punishment will be inflicted on us all, from the king to the lowliest slave, and no one will escape judgement. If we are not penitent, God will destroy us.’

Æthelred gritted his teeth. He had tried penitence, but over and over God had spurned his prayers and his offerings of recompense. His brother’s hideous wraith still walked the earth – how else if not by God’s will? Let others turn to the Lord for succour; he would not. Let Wulfstan batter heaven with his prayers – such was his episcopal duty. Mayhap God would pay heed to him.

He toyed with a bit of bread, listening with half an ear as Wulfstan gravely catalogued the sinful deeds of the men and women of Worcester. Adultery, murder, pagan rituals, and the miserliness of tight-fisted nobles ranked high among them, but Æthelred had no interest in the petty sins of Worcestershire folk.

‘What of your northern see, Archbishop?’ he asked when Wulfstan paused for breath. ‘What black sins, exactly, do the men of Northumbria have upon their souls?’

Wulfstan’s hard eyes – a zealot’s eyes in a grim face, he thought – fixed on his own.

‘The Lord said to me, from the north will come an evil that will boil over on all who dwell in the land. The prophet Jeremiah gives you warning, my king, and you would do well to heed his words.’

Æthelred closed his eyes. Jesu, but the man maddened him. He spoke of prophecies and warnings, but what further calamity did they presage?

Scowling, he tossed his bread to the table.

‘I could heed your prophet far better if you would make his message plain to me,’ he growled. ‘What mischief is brewing in the north and who is behind it?’

Wulfstan steepled his hands and rested his chin thoughtfully upon his fingertips.

‘The men of the north have little love for their king.’ He shook his head. ‘They are wary even of their archbishop. It is true that unrest is brewing in Jorvik, but I cannot say who is behind it.’

Cannot? Æthelred wondered. Or will not?

‘What of my ealdorman?’ he asked. ‘How does he treat with the men of Northumbria and the Danelaw?’ Ealdorman Ælfhelm’s commission was to bend the damned rigid northerners to the will of their king, but he had long suspected that the man’s activities in Northumbria had been far more self-serving. Get close enough and Ælfhelm’s actions stank more of scheming and guile than of vigorous efforts at persuasion.

Wulfstan’s thin lips seemed to grow thinner still. Whatever Ælfhelm was doing, the archbishop did not approve.

‘I am told that he has the ear of the northern nobles,’ Wulfstan said, ‘although what passes between them I do not know. Lord Ælfhelm does not confide in me.’

No. Ælfhelm was not the kind of man to confide in an archbishop. But Wulfstan clearly knew something about the ealdorman that he was reluctant to reveal. Sensing that there was more to come, he waited, and eventually Wulfstan spoke again.

‘I urge you to speak with Lord Ælfhelm on these matters, my lord. I, too, will take counsel with him at the Easter court, for I have reason to believe that some men in the north consort with pagan believers and evildoers from foreign lands. They must be brought to heel through fear of God’s wrath and the punishments sanctioned by law.’

Æthelred grunted his agreement to Wulfstan’s advice, but his thoughts lingered on the foreign evildoers the archbishop spoke of. He would like to know more about them and their dealings with the men of Northumbria, and perhaps with Ælfhelm himself. He would get nothing else from Wulfstan, he knew. The archbishop had never been one for details.

As for his ealdorman, he had grave doubts about Ælfhelm’s ability to bring the men of the north to heel. Or perhaps it was willingness that was lacking. Although Ælfhelm was the most powerful and wealthy of England’s magnates, he wanted more power still, and he would use every means at his disposal to get it. That meant alliances with those who bore some malice towards the Church or the Crown, and there were certain to be many such men.

So what alliances was Ælfhelm forging? His elder son had been wed years ago to a girl from the Five Boroughs; the younger last spring to a widow with lands along the River Trent. Each marriage had extended the ealdorman’s influence northward, and now he had but one child left unwed – Elgiva, his beautiful witch of a daughter.

And witch she certainly was, he knew from experience. When he had first wearied of his Norman bride, Elgiva had kept him spellbound for many a month. Her father had been behind that, he was certain. And Ælfhelm was likely using Elgiva now to snare some powerful ally among the disgruntled lords of the north. To what purpose he could not say, but he could make a very good guess. The men north of the Humber had never liked bending the knee to southern kings. It would take little to push them into betraying the oaths they had made to the House of Cerdic.

Betrayal. That might very well be the evil that Wulfstan’s prophet saw boiling over the land.

He glanced down at the gathering before him, to where the queen’s women sat at a table just below the dais. Ælfhelm’s troublesome vixen of a daughter should have been among them, and when he could not find her he breathed a quiet curse. When Wulfstan had been drawn from the table by a cluster of priests, Æthelred turned to Emma.

‘Where is the Lady Elgiva?’ he asked.

Emma’s green eyes considered him with innocent surprise. ‘I presume she is still in Northampton, my lord. You gave her leave to attend the wedding of her cousin Aldyth to Lord Siferth of Mercia.’

Christ, he had forgotten. But that had been a month ago, when the court had been at Sutton and Ælfhelm’s estate but two days’ ride away. Since then the queen had gone on pilgrimage, and the court had moved here to Wiltshire.

‘So she never joined you on pilgrimage?’ he asked.

‘No, my lord. I expected to find her here upon my return.’

He frowned. ‘I should have been told that she was still in Northampton.’ Ælfhelm had had his she-whelp with him for a month. Christ alone knew what mischief they were up to. He glanced at Emma. ‘Wulfstan suspects that there is something amiss in the north. I’ll wager half my kingdom that Ælfhelm is at the bottom of it and that Elgiva may have a role to play in his schemes.’ Jesu, it might indeed cost him half his kingdom.

Disgusted with himself, his queen, his archbishop – and with God more than all the rest – he stood up, calling for a light bearer to lead him to his chamber. He would send a messenger to Ælfhelm tonight commanding his entire family’s attendance at the Easter court. The ealdorman’s response would direct his next move.

As he stalked from the hall, he ignored the men and women of his household, for his gaze was turned inward as he considered all that the archbishop had said, and all that he had hinted. Wulfstan’s counsel may not have given him much insight into Ælfhelm’s mind, but he had other tools besides the archbishop – other eyes watching whatever events might be unfolding in the north. He would discover what treachery Ælfhelm and his offspring were plotting, and then he would find a way to stop it. He would strike, he vowed, before his enemies and their foreign-born allies could tear his kingdom away from him.

Chapter Three

March 1006

Aldeborne Manor, Northamptonshire

When Elgiva learned that a messenger had arrived bearing missives from the king to her ealdorman father, she did not wait for a summons to the hall to hear the news. Such a summons, she knew, might never come. Her father liked to flaunt his power by being niggardly with information.

So, with a servant girl at her back bearing a cup and a flagon of mead strong enough to loosen even a giant’s tongue, she entered the great hall, where her father had been meeting men from his various estates. Reeves, grooms, armourers, huntsmen, and their underlings – perhaps a score of men all told – stood in groups about the chamber waiting for an interview with their lord.

Whenever her father was in residence the hall was peopled almost exclusively with such men, and he would not suffer her to stay among them for long. Since she had returned here from her cousin’s nuptials, he had kept her mewed up, out of the sight of these fellows in case someone should look at her with covetous glances.

In his zealous regard for her chastity her father seemed to have forgotten that once, hoping to gain greater influence over Æthelred, he had turned a blind eye while she had been the king’s leman for near a year. No doubt he had expected, as she had, that the king would set aside his Norman bride and wed her. But Emma and the bishops had persuaded the king that his queen could not be easily disposed of and, to Elgiva’s father’s fury and her frustration, the king’s ardour towards her had cooled and she had gained nothing from the dalliance but a few golden trinkets.

Since then Æthelred had shared his bed with an assortment of favourites whose kin were far less prominent than her own, while she was kept like a caged bird under the queen’s watchful eye. And now, even worse, she was spending her days and nights here, fettered by her father’s far too rigorous protection.

As she made her way through the crowded chamber she searched for her father and found him standing in a narrow beam of sunlight that spilled through one of the hall’s high, glazed windows. She tried to gauge his mood from the expression on his face, but it told her nothing. Like his temper, his countenance was ever cold, dangerous, stone-hard, and grim. He was a fearful man to look upon – his face seamed and roughhewn, as if it had been carved from rock that had been cracked and broken. His black hair, coarser than hers but just as thick and curly, was shot through with skeins of white, and the once-black beard was mottled with grey. He was not a gentle man, as likely to greet her with a cuff as with a kiss, although he would welcome the honey wine readily enough.

She took the brimming cup from the servant and, walking boldly forward, she offered it to him.

‘Good day, my lord,’ she said, casting a slantwise, inquisitive glance at the parchment in his hand that bore the king’s seal.

Her father took the cup, drank deeply, fixed her with a steady gaze, and said – nothing.

She waited, silently cursing him for this little show of power over her. He knew what she wanted, yet it amused him to make her wait upon his pleasure.

He drank again, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and waved the parchment at her.

‘I suppose, daughter,’ he said, ‘that you wish to learn what news the king has sent me, eh?’ He bent towards her with a sneer. ‘Trust me, lady, it is of no consequence to you.’ He tossed back the rest of the mead and held out the cup to the servant for more.

Elgiva winced. She had brought the mead to loosen his tongue, not addle his wits. Her father was difficult to deal with when he was sober. He was impossible when he was drunk.

‘Yet it is news,’ she said, careful to keep her voice mild despite the seething anger his bullying always sparked in her. ‘I would be glad to hear it.’ She smiled at him, but he responded with his usual scowl.

‘The king’s second son has died,’ he said, carelessly tossing the parchment to the floor.

She stared at him, willing his bald statement to be a lie even as it echoed in her head. She had thought to wed an ætheling – either Athelstan or Ecbert – for it had been foretold to her that she would one day be queen. How else could that come about if not by an alliance with either the king or one of his sons? But the king, tied as he was to his whey-faced queen and her half-Norman brat, had gone beyond her reach. And now, if her father spoke true, Ecbert, too, had been taken from her.

‘I don’t believe, it,’ she whispered. ‘He was well enough at Christmas. What happened to him?’

‘The missive does not say.’ He shrugged. ‘The king has sons enough. He’ll not miss this one overmuch.’

‘Even so, it will mean a dismal feasting at the Easter court.’ Still, Athelstan would be there and would perhaps need consolation in the wake of his brother’s death.

‘That, too, is of little consequence to you,’ her father replied, ‘for neither you nor I will be attending the feast at Cookham, although it seems the king desires our company. We must disappoint him, I fear, but I will send your brothers in my place.’

He had surprised her again. To ignore the king’s summons to the Easter council was likely to raise suspicions in Æthelred’s already suspicious mind. Why do such a thing?

‘My brothers can hardly take your place, my lord,’ she said smoothly, ‘as you are his most prominent ealdorman, and their counsel can hardly measure up to yours. Besides, why should we not attend the gathering? The queen will have been looking for me to return to her household for some weeks now, and by—’

‘Are you so eager to return to your royal keepers?’ he snapped. ‘Now that I’ve prised you from the court, I see no good reason to take you back there again. You are my property, Elgiva, not the king’s, and I’ll not have my plans for you disrupted because Æthelred decides to take you into his bed again or to marry you off behind my back.’

‘What plans?’ she demanded. This was what she had feared for some weeks – that he had kept her here because he intended to put her to some use that suited his purpose, without caring in the least what she might want.

‘You will learn that when the time is right,’ he said. ‘Until then I will keep you close by my side because I have learned that I cannot trust anyone else to watch over you.’

She glared at him, and he glared back at her, confident, she supposed, that he had kept her blind and deaf, as helpless as a newborn kitten. But he was wrong about that, for she knew more about his affairs than he imagined.

‘I am aware of your frequent dealings with northerners, my lord,’ she hissed, ‘and I’ve heard that even men from across the Danish sea have been in this—’

In an instant he had slammed down his cup and grasped her arm with all the strength of a man well used to wielding a sword. She found herself thrust into a corner out of sight and hearing of the men in the hall.

‘If you cannot watch your tongue, girl, I shall cut it out for you,’ he snarled. ‘And while you’re about it, keep that inquisitive little nose of yours out of my business. I promise you, I look forward to the day when I hand you off to your husband and you become someone else’s problem.’

‘And that day would be when?’ she spat at him. ‘Soon, I think, for I am twenty summers old and you must use me before I am too old to be considered a prize for any man!’

‘You are no prize now, sullied as you are by the king’s lust.’ He gave her a shake, and then, to her astonishment, he grinned. ‘But have no fear, daughter,’ he said jovially, his words slurred and indistinct. ‘Your betrothal is all but settled. In the end, you will thank me.’

He stumbled against her, and she realized that the drink had done its work and more. He would be less careful now about what he said.

‘Who is it then?’ she demanded. ‘Who am I to wed? I will go to him gladly, as long as you have not sold me to some brute of a Dane.’

The words were barely out of her mouth before he’d clamped a hand at her throat.

‘I told you to keep your mouth shut!’ he snarled. ‘Get you back to your chamber, now; I’ve no more to say to you.’

He thrust her away from him and, her mouth set in a grim line, she left the hall.

Her father had not revealed everything, but he had said enough.

He had done the unthinkable – betrothed her to some filthy Danish warlord, some savage with a great deal of gold who wanted to buy a noble wife and rich properties in England. What had been the bride price, she wondered, that her father had demanded for her? Whatever the settlement, it would prove worthless, for she would marry no Dane. She had watched them rape and murder her old nurse, and her father well knew how much she hated and feared them. If he tried to force her into a marriage with one of those brutes, she would murder him with her own hands.

But it would not come to that. The king’s messenger must still be here, for he would eat and rest while a fresh mount was readied. If she could just get to him, she could put a stop to this marriage herself.

She sent the maidservant – her father’s eyes and ears, she was certain – to the larder house with what remained of the mead. Inside her own chamber she went to the coffer that held her most precious belongings, unlocked it, and withdrew a handful of coins. It should be enough, she guessed, to enlist the services of the royal messenger and to purchase the silence of any of her father’s grooms who might be about.

Fearing that she may already be too late, she made her way swiftly to the stables.

The king’s man, she saw with relief, was still there, checking the girth of his mount while a young groom clutched the bridle and spoke soothingly to the gelding. There was no one else about.

She went up to the boy holding the horse, whispered, ‘You did not see me here,’ and pressed a coin into his palm. ‘Understand?’ He grinned and nodded, and she added, ‘There’s more of that for you if you make sure that no one enters the stable while I am here.’

He scurried to the door, and she left him to watch the entryway while she turned to the courier. The man did not even glance at her, clearly in a hurry to be off. She stepped to his side and whispered with some urgency, ‘I am Lord Ælfhelm’s daughter. I would have you carry a message to the king.’

‘Aye, lady,’ he said, his eyes still trained on his task. He continued to busy himself with the saddle straps, and she was tempted to snatch his hand and force him to attend to her. There was no need, though. A moment later, apparently satisfied at last with his mount, he finally turned to face her. ‘What is it then?’

Now she hesitated. What if she could not trust him? What if he simply strode into her father’s hall and repeated to him everything she said?

She studied his face. He was young, barely more than a gawky lad, fair-haired and smooth-faced. Now that he was looking at her, his eyes glimmered with interest and, she thought, admiration. Surely he would be sympathetic to the plight of a woman under the thumb of a cruel father. And even if he betrayed her, no punishment that her father could inflict on her would be worse than a Danish marriage.

‘You must tell him,’ she said, gazing at him earnestly and willing her eyes to fill with tears, ‘that my father has betrothed me against my will to a Danish lord, and that I beg the king to help me, for only he can stop the alliance. Tell him too that my brothers are in my father’s confidence, and the king must not trust them.’ She took the man’s hand and placed four bright silver pennies there. ‘Can you do that for me?’

His eyes widened when he looked at the coins in his hand. She had probably given him too much, but she did not care. If he did as she asked, it was silver well spent.

‘I will give him the message, my lady,’ he said, quickly slipping the coins into the purse at his belt, as if he feared she might ask for some of them back.

‘Can you remember all of it?’ she asked.

‘I have it here,’ he said, tapping a finger to his forehead. ‘The king will have it in three days’ time; I give you my word.’

He nodded to her, and she stepped back as he mounted his horse. Keeping to the shadows of the stable, she held her breath as she watched him ride towards the manor gate. If the gate wards should stop and question him, he might give her away, however unwittingly. But they waved him through, and she expelled a little sigh of relief. She pressed another coin into the filthy hand of the stable lad and, satisfied that she had disrupted her father’s wretched scheme, she returned swiftly to her chamber.

The matter was in the king’s hands now. He would be furious when he learned what her father was planning, of course – would likely impose a fine or confiscate some of his properties just for considering such a move.

Her brothers would likely suffer the same fate. In truth, she wasn’t certain that her brothers were aware of her father’s plans. But if she had accused them falsely, what did it matter? They had treated her badly for years upon years, and now she would have her revenge.

She wanted all of them punished, but especially her father. For far too long he had kept her from his counsels, had plotted her future with never a thought for her interests and desires. He had treated her like a fool instead of recognizing that she could be of far more use to him if he would but confide in her. She would make him see that she was not without resources, make him regret that he had so badly misjudged both her wit and her willingness to bend to his will.

Chapter Four

March 1006

London

A procession of heavily laden carts was making its way from the Thames bridge towards the East Ceap. Athelstan nudged his mount past it, grimacing at the noisy clatter of wooden wheels on gravelled street. It was just past midday, the sun had burned away the mist that frequently hovered over the river, and London was, as usual, crowded as well as noisy.

And stinking, he thought, as he was forced to wait for another cart, laden with baskets of fish, to turn into the side gate of one of the city’s larger hagas before he could make his way into Æthelingstrete.

A sennight ago, when Ecbert’s coffin had been borne along this route to St Paul’s Abbey, the streets had been quiet. The ground had been more river than road that day and the air thick with fog and mist, but the men and women who had lined Æthelingstrete to watch the sombre procession had stood in silence – a mark of respect for his brother that still moved him.

It had been ten days since Ecbert had died, yet a dozen times on each of those days he had found himself turning to speak to the brother who had been his near constant companion for as long as he could remember – only to discover yet again that Ecbert was not there. He wondered if he would ever become accustomed to that emptiness. Certainly he had tried. He had thrown himself into his work, overseeing the building of a new wooden tower on the London side of the bridge; it exercised his brain and body well enough, but it did little to fill the void that Ecbert had left behind.

He rode beneath the wooden archway that marked the entrance to what the Londoners called the Æthelings’ Haga – usually an apt description, although since Ecbert’s death and Edmund’s immediate departure for Wiltshire, he had been the only ætheling in London. That was apparently no longer the case, he concluded, eyeing the lathered mounts in the yard. Edmund must be back.

He left his horse with a groom and moments later he entered the hall, where he found his brother waiting for him, still cloaked and grimed from travel. Edmund was seated at a table with an ale cup in his hand, and he wore an expression forbidding enough to keep the other men in the hall – slaves, men-at-arms, and trusted companions – at a healthy distance.

Even on a good day, Athelstan knew, Edmund could be forbidding. He had always been burly, but now, at seventeen, he had outstripped all his brothers in height. Athelstan couldn’t even remember the last time he’d won a wrestling match with Edmund. It had been years ago.

Going on looks alone, men took care not to cross Edmund.

The dark, silent one, their grandmother, the dowager queen, had named him. They are always the most dangerous. When he speaks, you would do well to listen.

At the moment Edmund was staring into his ale cup as if he could read the fate of the world there and he had just discovered that the world was about to end.

‘You look like hell,’ Athelstan said, sitting down opposite his brother. And no wonder, considering the tidings he had borne to the king. ‘How bad was it?’

Edmund took a long pull from his cup, then set it down and stared at it morosely.

‘He wanted to know every detail,’ he said heavily, ‘so I had to relive it in the telling.’ He took a breath and ran a hand through the thick brown hair that set him apart from his Saxon-fair brothers. ‘One can’t blame him, I suppose, for wanting to make certain that all had been done for Ecbert that could have been.’ He drained his cup, then pushed it away from him. ‘She came in while I was answering his questions. Hung on every word. Pretended to grieve for Ecbert. As if anyone would believe that she would mourn the death of one who might have stood between her son and the throne.’ He scowled at Athelstan. ‘I am mistaken,’ he corrected himself. ‘You would believe it.’

‘Leave off, Edmund,’ he said wearily.

Emma had ever been a sore point between them. To Edmund she was not a living, breathing woman but a tool of her ambitious brother, the Norman duke Richard, and so a threat to all the sons of the king’s first marriage. And as for him – but he thrust the thought of Emma away from him. She was on his mind far too often as it was.

‘Was the king satisfied that we had done all we could to save Ecbert?’ Had they done all that they could to save their brother? The question had been nagging at him like a toothache and would not go away.

‘Do you mean does the king blame you for Ecbert’s death?’

Edmund’s penetrating eyes probed his own, and Athelstan admitted to himself that this was exactly what he’d meant. As the eldest ætheling he had always shouldered responsibility for his brothers’ welfare, at least when they were together. He had also been burdened with most of the blame whenever their father found fault with them.

He made no reply, though, and Edmund shook his head.

‘Ecbert’s illness and death were no fault of yours, Athelstan, and the king knows that. When will you allow yourself to believe it?’

‘I keep asking myself if there was something more—’

‘The answer is no,’ Edmund said. ‘He was treated, he was blessed, he was shriven, and he has gone to God. Now you must let him go.’ He leaned across the table and his dark eyes were insistent. ‘You cannot bring him back.’

Athelstan rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. Edmund was right. He could not bring Ecbert back from death; could not change his wyrd. Yet since Ecbert had died, he had been unable to rid his mind of words that he had long tried to forget.

A bitter road lies before the sons of Æthelred – all but one.

That prophecy had been uttered two years before, within the shadow of a pagan stone dance by one who was said to be able to read the future. They were dismal words that he had repeated to no one. Why tell others a thing that he wished he had never heard himself? Even if he had shared the prophecy with Ecbert, it would not have changed anything; nor would it change Edmund’s fate, whatever it might be, if he were to speak of it now.

So he remained silent, and when he looked again at his brother he saw that there must be something more on Edmund’s mind, for he was tapping his fingers nervously against his empty cup while he chewed on his lower lip. When Edmund did not speak, Athelstan prodded him. ‘What are you not telling me?’

‘It’s just that …’ Edmund frowned, glanced away, then seemed to make up his mind about whatever was troubling him. ‘Ecbert’s death did not surprise the king. He already knew. When I entered the hall he looked up at me and nodded, as if he had been waiting for me. Before I said a single word he asked, Which of my sons is dead? Not sick or injured, but dead. He knew. I have been trying to explain it to myself all during the long journey back, but I cannot make sense of it. How could he have known?’

Edmund’s question hung in the air between them, and Athelstan was uncertain how best to answer it. Not with the truth, for the king had forbidden him to speak it.

The king is troubled in his mind.

It was Archbishop Ælfheah who had first alerted him to his father’s secret torment. And then he had witnessed it himself – had seen the king cower, grey-faced with horror from some invisible threat. Afterwards, when his father was himself again, he had spoken of seeing signs and portents of disaster.

Had he, then, been given some warning of the death of a son?

Jesu. He did not want to believe it, did not even wish to discuss it with Edmund. To do so was to tread perilously close to what he had been forbidden to reveal.

‘For fifteen years,’ he said, ‘the kingdom has suffered one blow after another. Viking raids, lost battles, murrains, flooding, famine – it is no wonder that the king looks for calamities. And rumour, as you know, travels on the wind.’

Edmund gave him a dubious look.

‘Aye,’ he said slowly. ‘Rumour. That may explain it.’ Then his face took on the shuttered expression that hid what he really thought.

Edmund would let it go for now, and Athelstan hoped that there would never be reason to speak of it again.

‘While we’re on the subject of tale-telling, then,’ his brother went on, ‘you should know that Archbishop Wulfstan arrived while I was at Calne. He bent the king’s ear for the space of a long meal, and whatever news he brought from the north, the king did not like it.’

That was no surprise. When their mother had died, the northern links that their father had forged through that marriage had been broken, and no measures had been taken to restore them. The northerners felt far more loyalty to one another than to a distant king who all but ignored them.

‘There may be rebellion stirring among the Mercians and Northumbrians,’ he said, ‘and Ealdorman Ælfhelm is likely up to his neck in it. The northerners’ allegiance to the king is no stronger than a chain made of straw.’ And what would his father do to stem that unrest? Another massacre, like the one on St Brice’s Day three years before, when so many Danes in England had been put to the sword?

‘If our father had taken Ælfhelm’s daughter to wife instead of Emma,’ Edmund growled, ‘there would be no trouble in the north. We need a more binding alliance with Ælfhelm or with one of the other northern lords to keep them loyal to us rather than to their Danish brethren across the sea. It should have been forged long ago.’

‘A marriage, you mean.’

‘Your marriage,’ Edmund said, ‘to Ælfhelm’s scheming daughter, yes. It’s what the girl and her father have wanted since before you could grow a beard and not, as you know, because of your comely face and bright blue eyes.’

Edmund was right about that. Elgiva, she-wolf that she was, had tried to worm her way into his bed for political gain – drawn to his status as heir to the throne. When that had failed she had opened her legs for the king instead, who used her as any king would. Despite that, he would take her to wife if it would ease the situation in the north – and if there was a chance that the king would approve. Which there was not.

‘The king,’ he said, ‘will never allow it.’

‘Then you must do it without his permission.’

‘Sweet Christ,’ he muttered. ‘You know how the king would regard that. He would think that I was making a bid for his crown. I might gain the allegiance of the northern lords, but the king would see it as the blackest treachery. It would rip the kingdom in two.’

‘Then you must reason with him. Convince him of the necessity of a marriage alliance with Ælfhelm’s daughter!’

‘And you think he would listen to me?’ Athelstan barked a bitter laugh. ‘When has he ever heeded any counsel that I have offered? For twenty years he has followed no one’s counsel but his own, and I have not the art to frame my words in a way that would convince him that they sprang from his own mind.’

‘You have to try, Athelstan,’ Edmund insisted. ‘We have to try, and we won’t be without support, I promise you. Ælfmær in the west and Wulfnoth in Sussex would welcome it. Most of the southern nobles would understand the necessity of such a move. At the very least, let us broach to Ælfhelm’s sons the idea of a marriage, and see what kind of response we get. We will have wagered nothing.’

He could guess the likely outcome of that. If his father heard of it, he would deem it a conspiracy led by his two eldest sons. The king already mistrusted him; this could only add to his suspicions.

Yet Edmund was right. Something must be done to prevent Ælfhelm from stirring up trouble in the north. Despite the king’s wrath, for the sake of the kingdom he and Edmund would have to take the risk and raise the possibility of a marriage. He did not see that they had a choice.

Chapter Five

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.

Chapter Six

Holy Saturday, April 1006

Cookham, Berkshire

The day before Easter was meant to be one of silent reflection and prayer. At least, it was for some, Emma thought as she sat in isolated state beside the king and looked out upon the subdued company that had assembled for the Holy Saturday repast. It was not so for England’s queen, nor for those of her household who must cater to court guests and prepare the great feast that was to be held on the morrow.

Although she would not show it with even the slightest gesture, she was weary from the stresses of the past week: From welcoming the highborn of England to the year’s most important gathering; from pondering an endless string of requests from abbots and bishops who sought her patronage; from answering the multitude of questions posed by attendants, stewards, and slaves; and from the hours of almsgiving on Maundy Thursday and the interminable rituals of Good Friday.

But it was more than exhaustion that made her muscles stiffen and her stomach clench, more even than the hunger brought on by the string of fast days that made up Holy Week.

Beside her, Æthelred sat robed in a mantle of deep blue godwebbe that shimmered in the candlelight like a dragonfly’s wing, but his face was dark with suppressed anger. She could only guess at the source of his displeasure, for he rarely confided in her. Instinctively, though, she felt it must be rooted in fear and so she, too, was fearful.

Æthelred was most dangerous when he was afraid.

The king was a man of dark moods, and she thought she had grown used to them. But this most recent ill humour seemed heavier than any she had yet seen. She had told herself that it was because of Ecbert’s death, still raw in all their minds, especially after yesterday’s mournful Good Friday service, with its vivid reminder of death’s agonies. But although this brooding had begun with Ecbert’s passing, she felt that something else was feeding it, and that the storm brewing within Æthelred could erupt at any time into cataclysm. Anxiety made her neck ache, as if she bore a leaden chain across her shoulders.

Reminding herself that it was fruitless to dwell on something she could not remedy, she turned an appraising eye on the sons of the king, most of whom she had not seen since Christmas. The three youngest had arrived earlier today, boisterous and jocular when they entered the royal apartments until they caught sight of their father’s thunderous face.

Edgar had grown like a wheat stalk in a matter of months. He was thirteen now, and his face had lost the roundness of boyhood. His long hair, pulled straight back from his forehead and bound behind his neck with a woven silver band, had darkened to the colour of honey. A sparse beard covered the point of his chin, and that gave him something of the look of Athelstan. He was nearly as comely as his eldest brother, too, with blue eyes that were turned upon the king just now with sober speculation. Not quite a man yet, Edgar, but serious for his age.

Far more serious than the brighter-haired Edwig, who, at fifteen winters, should have been the more responsible one. There was a carelessness about Edwig, though, and she had sometimes glimpsed in him a callous disregard for others that she did not like. He and his elder brother Edrid – the two of them so near in age and looks that they could be taken for twins – served along with Edgar in the retinue of Ealdorman Ælfric, and attended the king only on the high holidays and feasts. Even when they were children she had known them but little.

She watched as Edwig took a stealthy swallow from a leather flask at his belt – some strong liquor, she guessed, forbidden on this holy night, when only watered wine would be served in the king’s hall. Afterwards he waved away some protest from his frowning, twinlike brother, Edrid, who was clearly the good angel to Edwig’s bad.

She glanced at the king to see if he had witnessed Edwig’s transgression, but Æthelred’s brooding gaze was fixed upon the two eldest æthelings, Athelstan and Edmund. They stood to one side of the fire pit at the centre of the hall, deep in conversation with two men whose faces she could not make out until one of them turned and the firelight flickered on a handsome, chiselled cheek and black, curly hair.

And then she knew them – the sons of Ælfhelm, who had arrived without their sire or their sister, Elgiva. Æthelred would surely read treachery in their absence. Did he know, though, with certainty, of some perfidy that Ælfhelm might be planning? Was that the cause of his foul mood?

‘I think, my lord,’ she ventured, although she had little hope that he would respond, ‘that you are troubled by the absence of Elgiva and her father.’

‘I am troubled by a great many things, lady,’ he replied, his voice laced with sarcasm. ‘Would you care to have me enumerate them?’

But she refused to respond in kind.

‘If it would give you ease, my lord,’ she said.

‘Nothing will give me ease except death, and I have no desire for that as yet. Not for myself, in any event. What if I were to tell you that I think my sons are consorting with my enemies? What would you say then to give me ease?’

His words chilled her, and she glanced again to where Athelstan was speaking with apparent urgency to the sons of Ælfhelm. She placed her hand upon the king’s arm and said gently, ‘You judge your sons too harshly, my lord. They are never your enemies.’

There were those, she knew, who would counsel her to speak ill of her stepsons – that as the king’s esteem for them lessened, his regard for her own child must increase. As queen and mother of the heir, they would say, it was her task to put forward her own son and so garner greater status for him and, through him, for herself.

Yet she had no wish to turn Æthelred against the elder æthelings, and that was self-serving, too, in its own way. For she believed that if Æthelred should die while her son was still a child, the witan would place a warrior king upon the throne – someone who could wage war against England’s enemies. It would be Athelstan who would rule the kingdom; Athelstan who would hold her fate – and that of Edward – in his hands.

When that happened, her world would change utterly, and how was she to prepare for it except by cultivating the goodwill of her stepchildren for Edward’s sake? Æthelred’s tally of years was forty winters long now – many years longer than the men of his line who had come before him. And with each year that passed, the tension grew more pronounced between an ageing king who could not relinquish one jot of control and the grown sons who were eager for advancement and responsibility – especially Athelstan.

She felt as though she walked a sword’s edge between them – the king who was her husband, and the ætheling she could not help but love and whom she defended at her peril.

‘My sons,’ Æthelred said, ‘covet my crown, and would take it from me if they could find a way to do so.’ He nodded towards the group near the fire. ‘Even now Athelstan is garnering support from the sons of Ælfhelm for his claim to the throne.’

She looked again to where Athelstan’s fair hair showed golden against Edmund’s darker locks and the black curls of the sons of Ælfhelm. The king could not possibly read what matter they were discussing any more than she could. But she knew that although Athelstan might oppose his father at the council table, he would not reach out his hand betimes to take the throne. He had given her his pledge on that, and she trusted him to keep it. Æthelred had enemies, she did not doubt it – too numerous to count. But Athelstan could not be numbered among them.

‘My lord,’ she said, weighing her words carefully, for if the king suspected her feelings for his son, it would do Athelstan more harm than good, ‘you do your son an injustice. Should he raise his hand against you it would weaken the kingdom, turn the men of this land one against another. Athelstan must know this, and I think he would do nothing that would place this realm in such peril.’

‘Would he not?’ Æthelred asked bitterly. ‘Lady, there is much that goes on, within the court and without it, of which you know nothing. It were best you keep your mind upon matters of your household and the schooling of my daughters. Leave my sons to me.’

He stood up abruptly and left the dais, disappearing into the passage that led to his private chamber. A moment later, she saw a servant hurry to the group at the fire and escort them from the hall, following in the king’s wake. She did not like the look of that.

She beckoned the king’s cupbearer to her, a red-cheeked boy of ten whose father was the lord of several large estates within her dower lands near Exeter.

‘Take a flagon of wine to the king,’ she said, placing a silver penny in his palm as he bent to fill her cup, ‘and linger in the chamber in case he should have need of you. Tomorrow you shall tell me, and no one else, all that you hear.’

The boy nodded and left. Emma rose from the table to mingle with the men and women in the hall, but her thoughts were still directed towards the chamber of the king. Æthelred was correct when he said that she did not know everything that went on at court.

Still, she knew a great deal, and in Æthelred’s court, knowledge was power.

Chapter Seven

Holy Saturday, April 1006

Cookham, Berkshire

The king’s chamber was alive with light – banks of candles turning the night to day and reminding Athelstan that his father did not like the dark.

The king was afraid of shadows.

But his father feared other things as well, and there was suspicion in the hooded blue eyes that swept over the four of them: Ufegeat, Wulf, Edmund, himself. He felt like a warrior in a shield wall, but without benefit of either shield or blade.

Did the king suspect that they had been speaking of Elgiva and a marriage alliance? Was that why they had been ushered in here? If so, he was going to need the tongue of an angel to convince his father that his only intention was to save the kingdom, not steal it.

There was a long, heavy silence while a cupbearer slipped in and filled the goblet that stood on the table beside the king’s great chair, and then the silence was broken by the tread of boots and the creak of leather. Six of the king’s retainers, handpicked to do his bidding and ask no questions, filed into the chamber. Two of them stepped forward to flank the king. They were men whom Athelstan knew well, but when he probed their faces, they did not meet his eyes.

His palms began to sweat. He had often been called to answer to his father for what the king considered misdeeds, but there had never been armed men at his back before. He looked a question at the king, but his father’s eyes were fixed on Ælfhelm’s sons. Following that glance he saw a fine sheen of sweat on Ufegeat’s forehead, and next to him Wulf’s face was so pale that it looked to be carved from wax.

A thin shaft of fear sliced through him, and he cursed under his breath. There was some undercurrent here that he could not read, something to do with the sons of Ælfhelm and, likely, their father. He recalled now what Edmund had told him in London about trouble in the north, and recalled as well the many rumours that had sifted through the hall like smoke today – rumours about Ælfhelm’s absence from this gathering that, like a fool, he had not heeded.

It would not surprise him to learn of some treachery that the ealdorman was planning. For a long time now he’d had his own doubts about where the man’s true loyalties lay, although he had never been able to prove anything. If the king had discovered that Ælfhelm and his sons were plotting some move against him, then he and Edmund might well be deemed guilty by association.

Anxiously he watched his father, who rested an elbow on the arm of his chair, fingered his beard thoughtfully, and addressed Ufegeat.

‘I would know,’ the king said slowly, ‘what it was that you and my sons were discussing in the hall.’

His tone was not threatening, but Athelstan knew his father, knew that it was a ploy – a swordsman’s feint to disguise a second, far more lethal, thrust. He stepped forward to give his own explanation, but the king raised a hand to stop him.

‘I wish to hear it from the son of Ælfhelm,’ he said.

Ufegeat cleared his throat, and the noise of it was loud in the chamber’s tense silence.

‘The æthelings,’ he said, ‘broached the subject of a marriage alliance with my sister. They wished to know if we would support it.’

‘My lord,’ Athelstan began, but his father’s quelling hand silenced him yet again. He cast a nervous glance at Ufegeat.

‘And what was your response to my sons’ proposal?’

‘My first question, my lord,’ Ufegeat said, ‘was whether you would agree to any such betrothal. I reminded your sons that it breaks with custom for an ætheling to wed while his father still lives.’

There was censure in his voice – disapproval of anything that might defy the king. Athelstan glared at him, but Ufegeat ignored him.

‘Indeed, it does break with custom,’ the king said. ‘But you have another reason, do you not, for rejecting such a proposal? Is not your sister already pledged?’

And there was the second sword thrust. Stunned, Athelstan gaped first at his father, then at Ælfhelm’s sons to see their response. Ufegeat’s face had become a blank wall. Wulf, though, looked like he was going to be sick. Was it true, then? And if it was, who had bargained for Elgiva’s hand?

‘My lord,’ Ufegeat said stiffly, ‘I cannot say what arrangements my father may have made regarding my sister. He does not apprise us of every plan that he undertakes.’

‘No,’ the king said, his face thoughtful. ‘Perhaps not. A wise father does not share all his secrets with his sons.’

His eyes, hard and mocking, flicked towards Athelstan, who flinched as the barb struck home. His father had a great many secrets that he kept from his sons.

The king turned to Ufegeat again. ‘Yet your sister appears to know something of your father’s intentions,’ Æthelred observed. ‘Surely you do not expect me to believe that Ælfhelm would confide in his daughter and not in his sons?’

Ufegeat shrugged. ‘Elgiva is but a woman, with a woman’s desires and a meagre understanding of the affairs of men. She longs to wed, to be sure, but I cannot speak to what fantasies she may have spun from the whispers of servants and from her own feverish imagination. I certainly will not be held to account for it.’

‘Ah, but you will, my lord,’ the king said, his bland voice belying the threat in his words, ‘as will your father and this brother of yours.’ He raised his hand and the guards took hold of Ælfhelm’s sons.

Ufegeat resisted, struggling against his captors until one of them cuffed him about the face.

Staggering, his mouth bloody, Ufegeat cried out, ‘We are guilty of no crime, my lord. You cannot prove that we have done anything wrong.’

‘Yet I deem you guilty of treachery against my throne,’ and now the king’s voice was sharp as steel, ‘and in this I am your only judge.’ He gestured to his retainers. ‘Take them.’

Athelstan watched, his gut churning, as the king’s men dragged Ælfhelm’s sons from the chamber. They were not gentle. Ufegeat and Wulf tried to protest and were silenced with vicious blows.

When they had gone he turned to stare at his father, who was still flanked by two of the guards and who was eyeing him now, wolflike, as if taking the measure of a rival.

Would he and Edmund be dragged off as well, locked away until his father decided on their punishment? And if so, for what? He still did not see what Ufegeat and Wulf had done that was so wrong.

‘What is their crime?’ he asked.

The king reached for the wine cup at his side, drank deeply, then set the cup down so hard that the sound made Athelstan flinch.

‘Ælfhelm has betrothed his daughter to a Danish lord,’ his father said, ‘and they were privy to it. You saw their faces.’

If it were true, it would explain the ealdorman’s absence from court as well as his sons’ terror at being hauled before the king.

‘Are you certain?’ he asked.

‘The lady herself sent me word, insisting that her brothers could not be trusted.’ His father’s voice was sardonic. ‘Is that good enough for you?’

‘My lord,’ Edmund said, ‘there must be a blood alliance between your line and that of Ælfhelm. It will garner you the support of all the Mercian nobles against any other—’

‘Support for me?’ the king cried. ‘And what guarantee can you give that they would not support whoever weds Ælfhelm’s bitch?’

There it was again – that suspicion that always lay like a wide gulf between them.

‘We have sworn our allegiance – to you and to Emma’s son,’ Athelstan protested. ‘We are not traitors.’

‘Aye, so you say,’ his father scoffed. ‘But actions speak louder than any vow! You would have conspired against me with Ælfhelm’s sons had they not had schemes of their own in hand! If what you intended was in my interests, Athelstan, why did you not speak of it first to me?’

‘And what would you have said to such a plan?’ he demanded. ‘You would have humiliated me by saying it was foolish, then you would have accused me of disloyalty. What must I do, my lord, to convince you that I am neither a fool nor a traitor?’

He glared at his father, struggling to quell his rising anger, for he knew very well that there was nothing he could do. The king scowled back at him, but before either of them could speak again, Edmund stepped between them.

‘My lord,’ he said, ‘we are certain that Elgiva is the key to securing allegiance in the north.’ Athelstan almost laughed. His brother was beating a dead horse, and in any case, Elgiva was not really the issue here. ‘If you would but agree to—’

‘I will not reward treachery!’ his father thundered. ‘And I will not be tutored by my sons!’

‘No!’ Athelstan shouted back, frustration overcoming caution. ‘Nor by anyone else! You refuse all advice! Why is that? Are you so confident in your decisions, my lord? Was it not you who chose to make Ælfhelm the ealdorman of Northumbria? Yet now you are not so pleased with that decision. How are you to undo it? You cannot legally strip him of his lands and his powers unless you can prove—’

‘I am the king!’ His father thrust himself to his feet as he bellowed the words. ‘And I am the law!’

He glared at them, and Athelstan, staring into his father’s livid face, despaired. His father would never listen to him, not while he felt so threatened.

‘What will you do?’ he asked, although he feared to hear the answer.

The king waved a dismissive hand as if weary of the conversation, then took his seat again. Closing his eyes, he massaged his forehead, and for some time said nothing. He looked tired, and it seemed to Athelstan that every year of his long reign was etched upon his face.

After some moments his father muttered, ‘A hunter does not wait for the boar to charge before throwing the spear.’ Then he looked at Athelstan and growled, ‘I have done what is necessary. Now, leave me. I would be alone.’

Athelstan felt Edmund grasp his arm to urge him away, but he was not yet ready to leave. He wanted to know what his father would do to Ufegeat and Wulf. Ælfhelm would not sit idly by while the king held his sons captive, nor would the other lords take their arrest lightly. They, too, had sons.

‘My lord—’

‘Get out, Athelstan, before I set the guards on you!’

He did not doubt that his father would be as good as his word, so he shut his mouth, bowed stiffly, and followed Edmund out of the chamber and back to the hall. There was no music ringing through the high roof beams, no scop reciting a tale, no rumble of voices. This was Easter Eve, when Christ was in the grave and all men were to reflect on the suffering and death He had endured for their sins. The Winchester bishop stood upon the dais reading a sermon to the assembly. Athelstan paused only long enough to cast a swift, reassuring glance towards Emma, whose eyes – full of questions – met his. Then he followed Edmund, threading his way through the hall and out the door.

When they were alone, standing next to one of the clay ovens still warm from the day’s baking, Edmund muttered several colourful curses, then said, ‘You should have just made off with the girl and wed her.’

Athelstan barked a mirthless laugh. ‘If I had, I would be with Wulf and Ufegeat right now, probably in chains. And God knows where Elgiva would be.’ He frowned. ‘Come to that, I wonder where she is. With Ælfhelm, I assume.’

‘Or with her new Danish lord, whoever that may be,’ Edmund suggested.

‘If Elgiva betrayed her father’s plans for her, she clearly has no desire to marry whoever it is.’ Athelstan recalled the haggard look on his father’s face near the end of their interview. I have done what is necessary, he had said. What was it, exactly, that his father had done? ‘I’ll wager that the king has already taken some action against Ælfhelm,’ he said. ‘I wonder what mischief he’s set in motion, and what trouble is likely to come of it.’

At midnight Æthelred stood in the darkened church among his family and his court. A line of priests bearing glowing tapers – symbols of hope and resurrection – made its way through the nave. But as he watched the candlelight begin to blossom around the altar, something flickered at the edge of his vision, some movement in the shadows that lingered outside the light. His eyes were drawn towards that darkness, and there his dead brother – a dark wraith amid the shadows – stared back at him with black intent.

Pain crawled up his arm and into his chest, and he clutched his shoulder to ease it. Beside him, Emma reached out a hand, but he shrugged it off. This enemy was his alone – a burden he could share with no one, least of all his queen. It had already taken two of his sons, and it sought to sunder him now from those who were left.

He cursed it under his breath, and as if in response the shadow faded, taking the pain with it, and he drew a long, grateful breath.

Released from his brother’s malignant spell he sought and found Athelstan and Edmund, their youthful faces lit by the tapers in their hands. His thoughts swept back to the events of an hour before and to his sons’ protestations of loyalty. He put little faith in them. Athelstan, he did not doubt, was laying the foundation for his own rule in England. It was what he would do, were he in Athelstan’s place.

Ambitious sons, he reflected, were like wild horses that had to be kept in check – with force, if necessary. It had not come to that yet, but it would. His dead brother’s vengeful shade would likely hasten the day.

And when it came, he told himself, he must never flinch. He must do whatever was needed to hold on to his kingdom, even if it cost him his sons.

Chapter Eight

Easter Monday, April 1006

Western Mercia

Elgiva shivered as she peered into the gloom of the little manor chapel, saw that it was empty, and stepped inside. She did not like churches, but she needed a place to think, and this was as good a place as any to take refuge from unwanted company and from the sudden chill breeze that was scrabbling across the manor yard.

Pulling her cloak tight about her, she gazed up at a portrait of Saint Peter that had been elaborately painted on the chancel wall. The saint’s right hand was raised in benediction and in his left he held a magnificent silver key. A golden halo encircled his head, and in his white-streaked hair and beard she could make out a marked resemblance to King Æthelred.

Had the man who drew this, she wondered, ever seen the king? More to the point, she thought, as she began to pace the chapel’s floor, was she ever likely to see the king again?

The gloom seemed to deepen around her as she forced herself, once more, to face the truth. Even if the king had sent someone to rescue her from the living death of a Danish marriage, no one would think to look for her in a stronghold on the western edge of Mercia. Yet here she was, despite her protests that she was unwell and that she should not be made to travel so far to attend some wretched noble’s Paschal feast.

‘You are well enough,’ her father had barked. ‘And I have business with Eadric.’

Yes, she thought bitterly, business that involved hunting and drinking and the swearing of oaths, none of which had anything to do with her. This Eadric – newly come into his father’s estate – was a man of some substance now it appeared. Her father likely wished to bend the new man to his own purposes, to forge another solid link in his chain of alliances. It was a worthy enough goal, she supposed, although she knew there was some larger purpose behind it that her father, curse him, kept from her. As for Eadric, she guessed that he had invited them here in order to court the favour of his powerful overlord.

And still, none of it had anything to do with her.

She passed through a shaft of light that speared down through a high window, and the sudden dazzle drew her mind back to last night’s gathering in Eadric’s brightly lit hall. If his purpose in urging her father’s sojourn here had been to impress, Eadric had succeeded. Yesterday’s feast had been lavish, and he had shown her father great honour. He had even been gratifyingly attentive to her, which had mollified her somewhat for the arduous journey across Mercia that she had been forced to make in order to get here.

In truth she had found the young thegn’s manner to be so charming that she wondered why she had taken so little note of him before this. Black-haired, with a neatly trimmed beard, tawny skin, and dark eyes, he had the look of an outlander, although his family had been settled in Mercia for hundreds of years. Or so he said. She had caught a flash of cunning in his glance that had made her suspect he was not entirely to be trusted, which only intrigued her the more.

She had dreamed about him last night, had meant to tell him so this morning, but all the men had ridden out to hunt. It was vexing to find herself alone here but for a few servants, reduced to staring at the painted walls of a wretched little church while she waited for the bell to ring for the midday meal.

She completed a circuit of the chapel to find herself in front of Saint Peter again, and she scowled at him, for he was a reminder of the king’s indifference to her plight. She was about to turn away when a hand clamped over her mouth and an arm clutched her tight at the waist, pulling her against a hard male body. She struggled to escape but could not move.

‘It is Alric,’ a voice whispered urgently in her ear. ‘Do not cry out! Your father is dead, lady, and you are in grave danger. This has all been an elaborate trap, and if you wish to escape you must come with me now before it is too late.’

For a moment she stood frozen, paralysed by terror and indecision. Alric was one of her father’s thegns, and one whom she trusted. But what he was telling her was monstrous! Impossible!

‘Lady, we must fly!’ He turned her about so that she was looking into his face. His familiar, mocking smile was gone, and there was fear writ plain in his wild eyes. ‘Will you trust me?’

And she knew then that she had little choice. She nodded, and at once he snatched her hand and pulled her towards the door. He halted there briefly, glancing to the hall and then the stables before leading her out and around the corner of the building. Two horses stood there, saddled and tethered. He helped her to mount, and as she clutched the reins she heard, through the fog of shock that had settled over her like a shroud, the winding of a distant horn.

‘That will be Eadric and his men returning,’ Alric said. ‘A stroke of luck for us because they’ll have opened the gate. There is no time to lose. Stay close behind me, and do not stop for anything. Are you ready?’

She hesitated, for she was not ready, not for this. She wanted to pelt him with questions, to curse, to howl, but the grim set to his face kept her mute. At her nod he spurred his horse, and she followed him, charging towards the open gate from behind the cover of the church wall.

The few servants in the yard scattered away from them like frightened geese. The gate ward, though, stood his ground at first, waving his hands frantically until he dived sideways to avoid being trampled by Alric’s mount. She followed Alric through the yawning gateway and up a track that led away from the sound of the horn winding yet again, closer now than it had been before.

He led her on, clearly pushing the horses hard to put as much distance as possible between them and, if he had told her true, the pursuit that soon must follow. She could not ask any of the questions that flooded her mind, nor could she still the words that echoed in her ears like a tolling bell: Your father is dead.

It seemed to her that the whole world had just gone mad.

Easter Monday, April 1006

Cookham, Berkshire

Emma stood alone atop the new wooden rampart that had recently transformed the king’s Cookham estate from manor farm to fortified burh. In the grounds below her, tents and pavilions lay in neat rows, lit by firelight and by the shimmer of a half moon that glowed in the clear night sky. From a nearby tent she could hear a woman singing softly, soothing a whimpering child to sleep. In her own apartments, hidden from her sight just now by the massive bulk of the great hall, her own son was tucked into his cradle beside Wymarc’s little Robert. Edward had been sleeping when she’d left him, watched over by Wymarc and Margot and Hilde.

Æthelred’s daughters had been there too, and it was the sight of the two older girls, Edyth and Ælfa, whispering and giggling, their heads drawn close, that had driven her to seek a few moments alone. They had reminded her so of herself and her own sister, Mathilde, when they were children.

And there had been news today of Mathilde – of her death in Normandy. Struck down by a fever at Christmastide, her mother’s letter had said.

She had wept for her sister; Margot – who had guided them both into the world – had grieved with her, rocking her as if she were a child again.

Poor Mathilde. Even as a girl she had been plagued by fevers and agues; half her days, it seemed, spent abed. And now she had lost her final battle.

‘How is it that I did not know?’ she had asked Margot. ‘We were once so close. I should have felt it in my blood and my bones that she had left this world.’

Yet she had not known.

Now she gazed into the night, remembering other times and other places. Just like Æthelred’s daughters, she and Mathilde had been born a year apart, had shared beds, lessons, and duties. They had looked to each other for friendship and counsel; had quarrelled, wept, and forgiven. Until her marriage had separated them for ever.

It was Mathilde who should have come to England and been crowned Æthelred’s queen, for she was the elder. But their mother had deemed otherwise, and so Emma had wed a king and, a year later, Mathilde had become the bride of a Frankish count. Had she ever found happiness in that life? Emma had longed to know, but although she had sent letters, begging for some word from her sister, there had been no reply from the Countess of Blois.

The younger sister’s royal marriage had been too great a blow for the elder sister to forgive. There would be no forgiveness now.

She began to walk, her eyes misted with grief. She halted, though, when she realized that she was not alone, that in front of her a man stood beside the parapet, looking out through an opening towards the dark plain that led to the river.

‘You should go within doors, lady,’ he said. ‘The night is cold, and you would not wish to catch a chill.’

It was Athelstan’s voice that came to her through the darkness, offering advice that she would heed if she were wise. But tonight she was not wise, and the mere sound of his voice drew her to him.

Athelstan, too, she guessed, was weighted with grief.

She had not spoken to him yet of Ecbert’s death, for there had been no opportunity to share a private word. Now, burdened with her own sorrow, she longed just to be near him.

Going to his side, she gazed out towards the rushing, moonlit river, and she drew in a long breath, for her heart ached for both of them.

‘I have wanted to tell you before this,’ she said, ‘how much I grieve for the loss of your brother.’ That grief was bound up now with her sorrow at the death of her sister, but she would not burden him with that news tonight.

‘There is no need for you to speak of it,’ he said. ‘I know what is in your heart.’

She studied his face, the half that she could see just visible in the moonglow. Did he truly know what she felt? His brother Edmund had not believed that she could grieve for Ecbert, and for some time now she had been afraid that Edmund’s distrust of her, like some foul contagion, had spread to Athelstan as well. But in the next moment, when he turned to face her, the look he cast upon her dispelled all doubt.

‘I am not Edmund,’ he said gently, answering the question she had not spoken.

She looked into eyes filled with such sorrow and longing that she was suddenly frightened. How she wanted to reach for him, to draw him into her arms and console him as a sister might.

Yet she dared not offer him that comfort, for it was not a sister’s love that she carried locked within her heart.

‘No,’ she said softly. ‘You are not Edmund. Forgive me for doubting you.’

She very nearly touched him then, nearly placed her hand upon his arm where it lay so close to hers there on the palisade. But she resisted the temptation, turning instead to look out towards the river, knowing that she should go inside as he had urged her, yet unable to bring herself to leave him.

In the darkness she was reminded of another time that they had been alone together – when they had both succumbed to temptation. When desire and passion had overwhelmed wisdom and duty and solemn vows.

She had been shriven of that sin long ago, had promised God that she would sin no more. But the human heart, she had learned, was a thing not easily governed. And although she had thought that tiny bit of her was nothing more than a withered relic locked inside a casket of gold, now she felt it yearning for this man at her side.

After a time it was Athelstan who broke the uneasy silence between them.

‘Your son appears to be thriving,’ he said, ‘and my father does not yet mistrust the boy. I envy him that.’

She heard the pain in his voice, sharp as a knife, and she did what little she could to blunt it.

‘Edward is too young yet to disturb his father’s peace of mind,’ she said. ‘The king reserves most of his displeasure, I fear, for the son who stands closest to the throne.’ She knew what had occurred in the king’s chamber on Easter Eve, for her young spy had dutifully reported the angry words that Æthelred had flung at Athelstan that night.

He gave her a sour smile. ‘Nothing I do, it seems, will earn for me my father’s good opinion. Since he cannot bear the sight of me, I shall return to London tomorrow. Let him make of that whatever he likes.’

She bit her lip, afraid for him. The king was uneasy on his throne, and because of that the sons of Ælfhelm lay in chains tonight, under heavy guard.

‘Your father is suspicious because you do not attend him,’ she insisted. Why could he not see that? ‘When you are absent from court for months at a time he imagines that you are working against him in secret. Athelstan,’ she whispered, pleading with him, ‘do not return to London yet. Stay with your father. Break bread with him. Hunt with him. Partake in his councils. You cannot win his confidence if you are not with him.’

He kept his eyes focused on the distant darkness and did not meet her gaze.

‘I leave for London at first light,’ he said, as if she had not spoken. Then he turned to her, and the passion that flared in his eyes seared her to the depths of her soul. ‘You know why.’

Yes, she knew why. For a moment they stared at each other. They did not touch or speak, but she read in his face all the longing and despair that she knew he must see in hers.

‘Go to your chamber, lady,’ he said softly, ‘before we give my father good reason to distrust us both.’

Chapter Nine

Easter Monday, April 1006

Western Mercia

Elgiva could not remember ever being so cold. She rubbed her arms for warmth while Alric fumbled with flint and steel to light a fire. They were in a crumbling hovel of wattle and daub – a swineherd’s shelter she guessed, although she could not tell where. She had lost all sense of direction once the sun had gone down, but until then Alric had led her along narrow tracks, mostly through wide swathes of forestland. Sometimes, when they came to a clearing and she looked to her left, she could see the dyke that marked England’s border with the Wælisc kingdoms.

She edged nearer to Alric and the fire pit, away from the horses that he had insisted on bringing into the shelter with them, the two of them grooming the beasts with straw as best they could even before he would turn his hand to lighting a fire. She watched him coax the spark into life, a thick shock of brown hair falling over his eyes as he worked. What little she could see of his face, shadowed with a day-old beard, was pale and grimly set. His hands, as he fed twigs to the tiny flame, were trembling.

He was cold, too, then. Not from the night chill, though, any more than she was.

As the flames began to lick at the bits of wood and the stacked turf, he placed their saddles on the ground at the fire’s edge so that they made a kind of bench. He motioned for her to sit and she did so, wrapping her mantle about her and holding her hands to the smoky fire. She watched him take off his sword belt and lay it close. Then he sat beside her, handed her a skin of water, and from a satchel drew a half-eaten loaf and a block of cheese to share between them. She realized suddenly how thirsty she was, and she took a long drink of water.

Once, years before, she had travelled rough like this, when she and her brother Wulf had fled from Exeter with the Danes at their backs. They’d had a large group of armed men as escort then, had been well provisioned, too, for it was high summer and the land was bountiful. The Danes had been no more than a distant threat.

That had seemed like sport compared to this. She hadn’t been so afraid then.

She looked at the dry bread in her hand, but her stomach recoiled at the thought of food. She could think only of her father, and that he was dead.

Earlier, when they’d been forced to stop for a time to allow the horses to rest and graze, she had flung a question at Alric about what had happened. But he had clasped a hand over her mouth, listening for sounds of pursuit, hissing for silence. She had been frightened before, but it was worse after that, and she had swallowed all her questions.

Now, though, she had to know. However bad it had been, she had to know.

‘How was my father killed?’ She was hunched over, staring into the fire, bracing herself against whatever she was about to hear.

Beside her, Alric shifted forward as well.

‘He took an arrow in the chest.’

‘An arrow!’ She straightened, gaping at him. ‘But he was hunting. It might have been an accident.’ This could all be a misunderstanding. Her father might even still be alive. She could leave this stinking hovel in the morning and go back to Shrewsbury, discover how her father fared.

‘It was not just your father,’ he said, then took a long pull from the water skin, set it on the ground, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. ‘It was all your father’s men, too – his falconer, his grooms, the four hearth companions, and the two retainers who rode with him. All of them dead.’

She stared at his face, sculpted into harsh angles by the firelight. No accident, then. And no chance that her father was still alive. The hope that had flickered in her mind shuddered and died, and she recalled Alric’s words in the chapel, that it had been a trap.

‘Yet you escaped,’ she whispered. ‘How?’

‘I was late to the hunt, still mead-drunk from last night’s feast. When I awoke, the others were gone, but I knew they planned to loose the falcons on the heath below Shrewsbury. So I rode that way, thinking to join the hunt. I was still in the woods when I heard the shouting and realized that something was wrong.’ He drew a breath, grimacing at whatever picture was in his mind. ‘By the time I reached the forest edge, your father and the others lay on the ground in a wide clearing with arrows in their guts. Eadric and his men were already inspecting the bodies, making sure that—’

He stopped abruptly, glanced at her, and began again.

‘It was an ambush, and Eadric must have planned the whole thing. His archers had been hidden among the trees and they turned the meadow into a killing ground.’

She imagined how it must have been – horses and men confused by the onslaught of arrows, men cursing, crying out in pain, and after that, silence. In the end, it probably hadn’t been a feathered shaft that killed her father, but a knife or a sword blade. And still she could not believe that it was true. It seemed unreal, like a tale told by a scop who would change the ending to suit her if she commanded it.

But Alric wasn’t finished.

‘The bastards never saw me,’ he spat. ‘They were too bent on stripping the bodies and keeping the hounds from—’ He cursed, then snapped his mouth shut. ‘I went back to the manor to find you. I climbed the palisade easily enough, but I would have been hard-pressed to know where to look if I hadn’t seen you going into the chapel.’

She closed her eyes. She was trembling so hard that her teeth were chattering, and she clasped her hands tight, trying to focus – not on what had happened, but on what she must do next.

‘I must get to my brothers,’ she said between shallow breaths. ‘I have to tell them what Eadric has done so they can demand a wergild. The king has to make Eadric pay for this.’

But Alric was shaking his head.

‘Nay, lady,’ he said, ‘Eadric would never have done this thing unless the king himself commanded it. Æthelred must have discovered the plots that your father was hatching with the Danes. He wanted your father dead. Eadric will be rewarded, not punished, for this day’s work.’

She felt suddenly dizzy, the walls around her spinning so that she had to drop her head to her knees to make them stop. This was Æthelred’s response to the message she had sent him. But she had never dreamed that the king would do something so savage. To cut down the premier ealdorman of England was an act that spoke of a hatred so fierce it was not likely to stop there.

And her brothers were with the king.

‘What will he do to Wulf and Ufegeat?’ she whispered.

‘If they are still alive,’ Alric said, ‘I doubt they will be so for long. You cannot help them, lady. You must look to your own safety.’

Suddenly the day’s events became too real, and she rocked forward and back, hands against her mouth to stifle the wail that was swelling in her throat. She felt Alric’s arms go round her, and she gave herself up to the terror of what she had set in motion. She had wanted her father punished, but not like this.

Why had the fool chosen to wed her to a Danish lord? It was a decision that made no sense to her, and now they must all pay for it. Even she must pay for it.

That thought made her pull away from Alric and wipe her eyes with her hands. She would not weep for her father. Had he treated her better he would still be alive, and she would not be here now.

You must look to your own safety, Alric had said. And he was right. She was still alive. And although the world around her had changed utterly, she was still who she had ever been – the daughter of Ealdorman Ælfhelm, granddaughter of Wulfrun of Tamworth, and descendant of Wulfric the Black. She had lands and she had money, and there were men who would help her if she could but get to them.

‘My father’s thegns in Northampton will protect me from the king,’ she said. ‘You must take me there.’

Alric snorted. ‘That is exactly where Eadric and the king will expect you to go. There may already be king’s guards posted at the gates of your father’s manors, and by tomorrow they will be hunting for you all over Mercia.’

Of course; her father’s estates would be watched. Likely she could not even get a message to the men who might be of most use to her. In any case, many of her father’s closest allies would be with the king at the Easter court, and so at risk themselves.

She had no way of knowing how hot the king’s vengeance would blaze, or how far. If Æthelred should find her, what would he do to her? Would he murder her as well? Or would he merely imprison her, cast her into some black cell where she could never be found? He would certainly not wed her to any of his sons.

Yet that was where her destiny lay, she was certain of it. She had been promised that she would be queen, although how she was to make that come about she could not see. Not yet.

‘I must get as far away from Æthelred as swiftly as I can. Go where he cannot reach me.’ She must find a protector – someone with men and arms who would not be afraid to use them against the king if need be.

‘Then you must go either west into the Wælisc lands,’ he said, ‘or east to the Danelaw.’

‘Not west,’ she said. ‘I would be still within reach of Eadric, and I have no kinsmen there to protect me.’ She must go into the Danelaw, then. They had little love there for Æthelred – or so her father always said. Whom could she trust, though, to resist the lure of gold if the king should put a price upon her head? She ran through the list of her father’s allies, and then she had the answer. ‘We will go to Thurbrand,’ she said, ‘to the Lord of Holderness.’

Thurbrand had never been tempted by anything that Æthelred could offer him. She had once heard her father call him an old pirate, and chide him for shunning the rewards given to those who attended the king. But Thurbrand had vowed that he wanted neither the rewards nor the responsibilities that bending the knee to Æthelred would gain. So he remained in his fastness on the edge of the Danish sea, plotting against his English enemies in Jorvik, paying lip service to the House of Cerdic, and governing his people like a half king.

‘We’ll have to take a ship, then,’ Alric said, ‘for we could not hope to make it across Mercia with the king’s men after us. At first light we’ll go to Chester. The harbour there will have any number of vessels readying to make sail, and we can buy passage aboard the first one we find.’

‘How long will it take us to get to Holderness?’

He shrugged. ‘Impossible to say. Much will depend on the weather and on how quickly we can get passage on ships bound where we wish to go. It may take us months, and if it does, what does it matter? It will do you no harm to disappear from England for a time. Let Æthelred wonder what has become of you.’

That prospect cheered her. She would be the missing piece on the game board that was England. They would probably search the abbeys for her, and the king would grow frantic when he could not find her. It was hardly recompense for her father’s murder, but it was a beginning.

‘We must get word to Thurbrand,’ she said, ‘that I am making my way there. Can it be done?’

‘Yes, but’ – he held up her hand and the gold and gems that covered each finger glittered in the firelight – ‘it may cost you some of these baubles.’

He turned her hand over and ran a fingertip across her palm, and she was astonished by her response – desire shimmering through her like summer lightning, the heat of it easing her fear. Her body remembered Alric well, it seemed, for he had pleasured her like this before, years ago, and she was sorely tempted to lose herself in the sensations that she knew he could arouse in her. But once she set her foot on that path there would be no going back, and she had no wish to knock at Thurbrand’s gate with Alric’s brat in her belly.

She clasped his hand between her palms and held it tight.

‘I am your lord now, Alric,’ she said, ‘and I expect you to serve me as you served my father.’ He could rape her if he wanted to, she supposed. She would not have the physical strength to resist him, and even if she did, where was she to run? Her father had trusted Alric, though, had been generous with him; she hoped that she could do the same. She released his hand, slipped a ring from her finger, and placed it in his palm. ‘You have done well by me today,’ she said, ‘and I give you this as a pledge of far greater favours to come. Will you protect me until we reach Holderness?’

She watched him closely, saw the cocked brow and the speculative look in his eye. Had any woman ever refused Alric’s attempt at seduction? Likely she was the first.

He nodded, and pocketed the ring.

‘I am your man, my lady,’ he said, ‘to Holderness and beyond, if need be.’

‘Good.’ She held up her hands. ‘The rest of these baubles we will use to get us there. And in Chester you will buy me a fine tunic and breecs. The king’s men will be looking for a woman and a man, not a young lord and his servant.’

They settled themselves to sleep then, on either side of the fire. For a long time, though, she lay awake, staring into the dying flames and pondering her future. If her brothers were dead, there was no man now who could command her except the king. And once she slipped free of whatever net Æthelred might throw out to snare her, she could claim her estates and marry. She could marry any man she wished.

She closed her eyes, and as she let herself drift towards sleep she wondered where Lord Athelstan was. She wondered if he realized just how valuable she could be to him.

April 1006

Near Saltford, Oxfordshire

Athelstan halted his horse beside the standing stone that pointed skyward like a gnarled finger. In the shallow valley in front of him, beyond the ring of stunted oaks, he could see the circle of stones and the figure seated at its centre, waiting.

It was not too late to turn back; not too late to make his way to London as he had intended when he left his father’s hall. Even now he did not know if he had come here of his own free will or if he had been drawn by some force that he did not understand.

He knew only that he was afraid – for himself, for the king, for England.

A succession of grim possibilities had been coursing through his mind for days now in an endless, looping string. Any move that his father made against Ælfhelm might split the kingdom. Any action that he himself might take to avert such a split would add to the suspicions his father was already nursing against him. Any hint of discord between the king, his sons, and his thegns would bring Viking raiders to their shores like wolves drawn to a bleating lamb, and that might well destroy England altogether.

Below him, the woman seated beside the fire did not look up, but she must know that he was here. He could not shake off the sensation that she had called him – that she had some answer to give him, if he could but ask the right question.

That, too, made him afraid.

Above him the sky darkened, then brightened again, as clouds drifted across the face of the sun.

The sky was of two minds, he thought, just as he was. But he’d come this far already, three days’ ride in the wrong direction.

So he swung off his horse and led it down the hill, leaving it to graze while he walked into the circle to take his place across the fire from the seeress. As they regarded each other for a long, silent moment, it crossed his mind that she had suffered some wasting sickness, for her face was thinner than he remembered, her nose as sharp and pointed as a merlin’s beak, and her skin creased with lines that had not been there two winters ago. He glanced past her, to the daub and wattle hut that was her dwelling. When last he was here he had left behind a purse of silver, but she had clearly not spent it on her comforts.

Finally she broke the silence.

‘Twice before this you have come to me, lord, and twice you left here doubting the truth of the words I spoke to you. Will this time be any different?’

How did she know that he had doubted her? Perhaps it was not such a difficult thing to divine, though. No man wished to believe in a future that was bleak.

‘Mayhap it depends on the question asked and the answer given,’ he replied.

She nodded. ‘Ask your question, then, lord, and I will give what answer I can.’

He paused, and as he looked into her eyes the question that he would pose came to him at last.

‘Is it possible for a man to change his fate?’

The black eyes flashed at him, or perhaps he was merely seeing the flames reflected there.

‘Every man’s wyrd is set, my lord, for it is the fate of every man to die. That end is inescapable.’

‘That end, yes,’ he agreed. ‘But there is far more to any man’s life than just the leaving of it. Is there only one path that a man must follow to his life’s end?’

‘One path only,’ she said. ‘Yet not every step upon that path is carved in stone.’

It seemed to him that her words were a riddle set within a maze.

‘Then how,’ he asked, ‘can anyone read a man’s future?’

She dropped her gaze from his, frowning into the fire.

‘The future of any man’s life is not a path that runs along a plain, my lord, but one that follows a trail over mountains and chasms that are hidden in mist. Sometimes, for a brief spell, the mist clears, and one who has the gift can see the way. Can you change the path? No. But no one, not even the most gifted, can perceive at a glance every valley or every mountaintop that a life will follow, nor every other life path that crosses it along the way.’ She looked into his eyes again. ‘You have not asked me about the thing that concerns you the most, I think. There is something far greater than the fate of a single life that troubles you.’

That much was true. It was not his wyrd that mattered, or his father’s. It was the fate of England that he would know.

He made no answer, but she spoke as if she had read his thought.

‘Then I will give you this answer to the question that you do not ask. Whether the thing that you desire is within your reach or not, failure is only a certainty if you do not strive to grasp what you would have.’

So. He must do whatever he could to preserve the kingdom, no matter the cost. Yet she would not promise him success, only certain failure if he did not make the attempt. What, he wondered, would be the price that he must pay?

‘And if I give you my hand now and ask you to tell me my future, what would you say to me?’

She dropped her eyes to the flames again, and her voice was a mere whisper.

‘What I would say to any man, for I have searched the fire and smoke again and again these many months, and what I see is ever the same.’

He waited for her to speak, and when she seemed disinclined to go on, he prodded her.

‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘What is it that you see?’

She lifted her gaze to his, and he thought she tried to smile, but her eyes were filled with tears.

‘I see fire,’ she said, ‘and smoke. There is never anything else.’

April 1006

Cookham, Berkshire

The imprisonment of Ælfhelm’s sons led to angry clashes between Æthelred and his ministers. Throughout Easter Week while the council sessions continued, Emma observed the discord and the king’s response to it with growing dismay. Æthelred went nowhere without a ring of trusted warriors close about him, but the presence of armed men in the hall merely added to the tension that charged the air like lightning about to strike.

She was not present on the day that Lord Eadric of Shrewsbury strode into the hall with a dozen men at his back to report that Ealdorman Ælfhelm was dead. She heard about it soon enough, though. His bald statement set the court buzzing. The king declared that Ælfhelm had been punished for his treachery against the Crown, and immediately ordered Ælfhelm’s sons sent in chains to the fortress at Windsor. For safekeeping, he insisted.

This led to more unrest among the men of the witan. They demanded an accounting of Ælfhelm’s crimes and the crimes of his sons, but the king steadfastly refused to enumerate them. It was enough, he claimed, that he knew what they were, and even his bishops could not move him to say any more. At this Lord Æthelmær of the Western Shires grew so irate that he retired from the king’s council altogether, saying he would rather spend the rest of his life in an abbey serving God than continue paying court to an unjust king.

Emma had met with the man and tried to dissuade him from taking a step so drastic and irrevocable. He had listened to her arguments with grave respect and courtesy, but in the end she could not sway him from his decision. The next morning he had left Cookham with his sons and more than fifty warriors beside. The king never even tried to placate Æthelmær and sent no word of Godspeed, but Emma had watched the company ride away with misgiving.

And all the while there was an endless flurry of rumours about Elgiva, who seemed to have disappeared from the earth altogether. Some claimed that she was dead, but Emma gave those stories no credence. Elgiva was alive, she was certain. The Lady of Northampton had somehow slipped whatever snare Eadric had set for her, and that had merely goaded him into redoubling his efforts to capture her. He’d even sent men to the convents that were scattered throughout England – a fruitless endeavour in Emma’s opinion, despite tales that Elgiva had been seen at Polesworth, at Shaftesbury, and at Wilton. Elgiva, she knew, would never willingly place herself within the confining walls of a nunnery.

She had said as much to Wymarc as they walked together one morning beside the river. Pausing for a moment to look up, into the wide blue expanse that was uncharacteristically free of clouds, she had wondered aloud, ‘Where under this English sky is Elgiva? And what is she doing?’

‘She’s a temptress, isn’t she?’ Wymarc had replied. ‘She’ll have used her looks and her cunning to persuade some fool of a man to give her shelter.’

Emma thought that all too likely. But to whom would Elgiva turn for help?

‘Let us hope,’ she said, ‘that she has gone to ground and stays well hidden.’ Preferably outside England’s borders, where her wealth and connections would not tempt one of Æthelred’s ambitious thegns or, God forbid, an ætheling, to wed her.

Such an alliance, even now, with Ælfhelm dead and his sons imprisoned, would have its advantages. She imagined Athelstan fettered to the beautiful, scheming Elgiva – and abruptly she pushed the thought away. The king would never agree to it, and to attempt it without his blessing would mean catastrophe – father and son irrevocably divided and, far worse, a kingdom in chaos. Athelstan would never take that step.

He must not.

‘I doubt you need worry about Elgiva,’ Wymarc said. ‘She’s crafty as a cat. Toss her in the air and she’ll land on her feet every time.’

Yet Emma worried. As relieved as she was that Elgiva was no longer in her household, she had no wish to see her at the side of an ætheling or of some northern warlord, but neither did she wish her to be at the mercy of Eadric and his hounds.

When the council session ended, most of the nobles set out for their homes – fled, Emma thought – eager to get away from the king’s fierce, suspicious gaze. Two of the Mercian magnates, though, were ordered to remain. They were the brothers Siferth and Morcar, kin by marriage to Ælfhelm and the first to plead with the king on behalf of Ælfhelm’s sons. Æthelred claimed that he wished them to advise him in the search for Elgiva, but everyone knew that the men were hostages to the king’s fear of Ælfhelm’s supporters. The two men could not plot against him if they were at court, under his so-called protection.

Siferth’s young bride was Elgiva’s kinswoman, Aldyth. She was fifteen winters old, and tall for her age, quite the opposite of Elgiva, who, Emma reflected, was elfin in comparison. Everything about Aldyth was large – mouth, hands, feet, even her teeth. Yet she was not unattractive. The large eyes beneath her dark brows were beautiful, and her skin was fair and smooth. She had a lovely, wide smile – when she did smile, which had not been a frequent occurrence of late.

When Aldyth had first arrived at court, just before Easter, she had been shy and exuberant all at once. With the arrest of her cousins though, her excitement had turned very quickly to bewilderment. And when word came of her uncle’s death and Elgiva’s disappearance, her bewilderment had turned to horror and fear.

Emma had done what she could to shelter her from the rampant speculation about the fate of her cousins and from the cloud of suspicion that had settled upon her husband and his brother. It was Hilde, though, Ealdorman Ælfric’s granddaughter, who had taken charge of Aldyth, just as she had once taken charge of the king’s young daughters when she was no more than a child herself.

They sat together now, Hilde and Aldyth, on one of the fur hides that covered the floor, keeping watch over Edward and Robert, who seemed determined to explore every corner of the chamber. From her place at the embroidery frame under the high window, Emma watched them and smiled. Hilde had grown into a lovely young woman, her hair in its long braid the colour of honey. She was the same age as Aldyth, but she seemed years older somehow. Perhaps that was due to the responsibilities she had shouldered in the royal household, Emma thought. Or perhaps it was because she had lost both of her parents when she was so young, her mother to sickness and her father to the king’s vengeance. Hilde was smiling now, though, as Aldyth spun a wooden top before the delighted eyes of the two bairns.

Edyth, who was seated with her sisters beside Emma, looked at the group on the floor and scowled.

‘Can we not get some servants to take the children so these ladies can help us with this altar cloth?’ she asked, her tone surly. ‘The design is intricate and it is likely to take us years to finish it.’

‘This is a gift from the royal family to Archbishop Ælfheah,’ Emma replied, ‘and therefore we should be the ones to work the embroidery.’

She frowned at Edyth, who had been discontented with the entire world, but mostly with Emma, for some weeks now. The king’s eldest daughter was clearly gnawing on some grievance, but Emma had yet to determine in what way she was at fault.

She saw Edyth about to make another protest, but before she could say anything one of the household slaves, a boy of about eight, raced into the chamber and straight to Emma’s side. Without waiting for permission to speak, he cried, ‘There is word from Windsor that the lords Wulfheah and Ufegeat have had their eyes put out!’

The needle slipped from Emma’s hands, her gaze drawn immediately to where Aldyth and Hilde sat frozen, their faces ashen. They stared back at her with horror in their eyes until Aldyth collapsed forward, wailing as if she’d taken a mortal blow. Instantly Margot was at the young woman’s side, wrapping a comforting arm about her while Wymarc swept a protesting Robert from the floor.

Emma grasped the young slave by the arms and pulled him towards her. He was new to the court, still raw and untutored, sold into slavery during the worst of the famine when his parents could no longer feed him. He had meant no harm. He had only been eager to tell her the news, but a slave who could not hold his tongue was of no use to her.

‘You are never to speak in my presence until I give you permission to do so, whatever the message you carry. I shall punish you if you ever burst into my chamber like that again. Do you understand?’

He nodded, his eyes wide and frightened.

‘Good,’ she said, drawing him still closer. ‘Now, tell me,’ she said more gently, for his ears alone, ‘what else do you know of their fate?’ She cast another quick glance at Hilde and saw with a pang that the girl’s face was wet with tears as she clutched a whimpering Edward to her breast and stared pityingly at Aldyth. Hilde’s father had suffered this same cruel punishment, had even survived it, although he’d spent the rest of his life in exile, consumed by bitterness and hatred. Hilde had known him only in the weeks before he died – a twisted wreck of a man. This news, Emma thought, must bring back all the anguish that his young daughter had felt for him. Swallowing the hard knot of pity in her throat, Emma turned back to the boy and asked urgently, ‘Do the prisoners still live?’

‘I know not, my lady,’ the boy whispered, clearly frightened by the distress he’d caused.

‘Go and see if you can discover it,’ she said, ‘and bring me word.’

‘Yes, my lady,’ he said, remembering to bow before he scampered off.

Emma drew in a long breath and stood up, considering what to do next. Aldyth still sat on the floor, wrapped in Margot’s arms and sobbing with sorrow or with terror – likely both, Emma thought. The girl certainly had good reason to be afraid. She belonged to a family that had earned the king’s enmity, and there was no telling how far Æthelred would carry his vengeance. If he should send men here to take Aldyth away, even she would not be able to stop them.

All work on the archbishop’s altar cloth had ground to a halt. Edward was crying despite Hilde’s efforts to soothe him. Aldyth was distraught, and Edyth was frowning at her while her younger sisters stared at the weeping girl with frightened eyes.

‘Hilde,’ Emma said, taking Edward from her and pacing with the light, bouncing step that usually quieted him, ‘please take the younger girls outside for a walk.’ That would remove them from this turmoil and give Hilde a task that would hopefully take her mind from painful memories.

But it was Edyth who stood up and began to herd her sisters towards the chamber door, saying, ‘I will take them.’

‘I wish you to stay, Edyth,’ Emma said. ‘I may need your assistance.’ Edyth was old enough now to begin to learn how to deal with a court crisis.

‘And I wish to go,’ Edyth said, her voice taut as the string on a bow. She paused beside Aldyth and said, ‘You should not weep for those men. They were my father’s enemies. He would not have punished them had they not deserved—’

‘Be silent!’ Emma said sharply. In an instant she had thrust Edward into Hilde’s arms and, drawing Edyth aside, she hissed, ‘Edyth, you must show compassion for this girl. Her cousins have been horribly punished, her uncle is dead, and whatever they may have done, she must be very frightened. She is all but a hostage because of them.’

‘If she has done nothing wrong,’ Edyth replied, ‘then she need not be afraid. My father will not harm her. Why do you not tell her that?’

Emma wanted to weep with frustration. ‘I cannot tell her not to be afraid,’ she said, ‘because things are not as they should be. Everyone is frightened, tempers are raw, and I cannot speak for the actions of anyone.’ Least of all the actions of the king.

‘But it is your duty to defend my father,’ Edyth persisted, her face growing flushed and angry. ‘Only you will not, because you hate him.’

Emma stared at her. Where had this come from?

‘You are mistaken, Edyth,’ she said coldly. ‘I do not hate the king.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Edyth insisted, her voice rising. ‘You hate all of us. You only care about Edward and no one else. My brother Edmund says that you will not be happy until all of us are dead.’

Emma slapped her almost before Edyth finished speaking. The girl glared at her for an instant, then turned and fled the chamber.

Still stunned by the poison of Edyth’s words, Emma let her go. Her heart, though, was filled with misgiving. When had Edyth begun to resent her? At the time that she and Æthelred had wed, his daughters, all of them so very young, had accepted her almost as if she were an elder sister. Whatever suspicions the king’s sons may have harboured against her, his daughters had warmed to her. Clearly that had changed, at least where Edyth was concerned.

Had it started with Ecbert’s death, or did it go even further back, to the birth of Edward?

She put her fingertips to her temple and rubbed them against the pressure that had begun to pulse there. Dear God, she should have expected this. She should have prepared herself to face it, for it had to come sooner or later – this chafing between them. The girl was mature enough now to understand that her prestige had been lowered when her father had wed a Norman bride and given her a crown that Edyth’s own mother had never been granted. Edward’s birth could only have added to Edyth’s resentment. Edyth was ambitious. As she grew older, she would likely demand a role that held some influence within the court, and until she got it there would be no peace between stepmother and king’s daughter.

She looked at the others in the room – all of them upset and afraid. The younger girls were most frightened of all, she suspected, because they would not understand what tensions lay behind the little drama they had just witnessed.

She nodded to Hilde to take Edward and his half-sisters away, then she drew Aldyth to the bench along the wall and sat beside her. Even as she murmured words of consolation, though, she brooded on the king’s eldest daughter. She would have to find a way to reassure Edyth, win her over somehow; only she was at a loss as to how to go about it.

Edyth was too proud ever to admit that she could be in the wrong. She shared that trait with her father.

And was the king wrong about the guilt of Ælfhelm and his sons? Perhaps not; but the cruel measures that he had taken against them and his silence about their crimes could only breed discontent among men whose loyalty was already strained. If the summer brought dragon ships to England’s shores, would the men of England unite under their king, or would they turn to someone else to protect them?

Once more, her thoughts flew to Elgiva, who was as capable of treachery and deceit as her father and brothers. Where was she, and what kind of vengeance might she even now be plotting against the king?

A.D. 1006 Then, over midsummer, came the Danish fleet to Sandwich, and they did as they were wont; they barrowed and burned and slew as they went.

– The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Chapter Ten

July 1006

Cookham, Berkshire

The midsummer sun was at its height as Athelstan rode with Edmund and a dozen of their hearth guards along the Camlet Way towards the royal manor at Cookham. The road here, just north of the bridge that crossed the Thames near Shaftsey, cut through a forest of oaks, and he was grateful for the cooling shade. As they neared the river the trees thinned, and a horn blared from the walls of the burh that guarded the crossing.

Good, he thought, the guards are vigilant. He counted fifteen of them on the palisade. His bannermen, riding at the head of his company, signalled to them, they signalled back, and the wail of the horn faded. Casting a critical eye on the fortified structure perched on the island midriver, he noted that two new watchtowers had been added since last he was here.

‘It looks like Ealdorman Ælfric has been strengthening the shire’s defences,’ he said to Edmund. His brother made no reply, and Athelstan, irritated, scowled at him. ‘Edmund, something’s been eating at you all day. Are you going to tell me what it is, or are you going to continue to keep me in suspense?’

Edmund scowled back at him, but finally he broke his sullen silence.

‘How much will you tell the king about what you’ve been doing?’

It was a fair question, and one that Athelstan had been asking himself for weeks as he met with thegns all through the Midlands in an effort to stem their outrage over Ælfhelm’s murder. He had told them that Ælfhelm had been consorting with men close to the Danish king. He had done what he could to convince them that his father had been forced to move against the ealdorman, but he had not been able to defend the king’s tactics – the ruthless butchery of Ælfhelm and his sons. When pressed he had vowed that if he were on the throne, he would be far more open and even-handed in his dealings with his nobles than his father had been.

It was a promise not likely to endear him to the king, should he hear of it.

‘Are you afraid that I will end up like Wulf and Ufegeat?’ he asked Edmund. Poor devils. They had been mere pawns in their father’s dangerous game, yet they had died miserably in a dank and fetid stone cell, their wounds, it was rumoured, gone untreated. Siferth and Morcar, it seemed, had been granted possession of the ravaged bodies of their kinsmen for burial, and they had borne witness to the consequences of the king’s wrath. Word of it had spread through the realm like wildfire.

‘Aren’t you afraid?’ Edmund turned the question back at him.

‘Yes,’ he growled, ‘I am. The king sees enemies everywhere and I am hardly invisible. But if he demands an accounting from me, I will give an honest answer. Someone has to speak openly to him about the uncertain temper of his nobles.’

Edmund was silent for a few moments. Then he said, ‘The king’s enemies are everywhere. Our northern border is under attack by the Scots, and the king’s spies have warned that the Danes will strike before summer’s end – God alone knows where. I think he was right to make an example of Ælfhelm. He has made it clear that he will punish treachery and disloyalty. It used to be that gold and lands and preferment were enough to keep men loyal. No longer, though. In times such as these, fear of punishment may be the only thing that will compel men to cleave to their king.’

‘But he is a weak king, Edmund, and no warrior. If the men inside his realm turn against him, it is because they fear he cannot protect them from the enemies who press us from outside. Mark me, there is a storm coming and we are ill prepared to meet it. Jesu, with Ælfhelm dead there is no longer an ealdorman in Northumbria or in Mercia. Who will organize the defence if the Danes strike the towns along the Trent or the Ouse?’

‘Eadric of Shrewsbury, judging by the trust the king has placed in him lately.’

‘Eadric!’ Athelstan snorted. ‘He is a henchman, not a warrior.’

‘Warrior or not, he is better than no leader at all,’ Edmund countered.

As to that, Athelstan had his doubts. What they needed was time – time to consult over the leadership of the northern shires, time to bring in the harvest, time to prepare and stock the burhs for defence. He had begged the churchmen he had spoken with to pray for time so that they could gather strength to meet their enemies.

But as Edmund said, there was already fighting along the border with the Scots, and he feared there was an ill wind blowing across the Danish sea. The one thing that the people of England did not have was time.

They were over the bridge now, the island behind them, and the gates of the palace rose ahead, reinforced, he noted, by a triple guard. Within the walls all was clamour and mayhem, far surpassing the everyday comings and goings of servants, retainers, and men-at-arms. He had difficulty guiding his mount past men sorting through piles of arms and equipment, women and children scurrying from building to building weighed down with bundles, and grooms loading horses and pack mules.

The king’s household was preparing to move, but there was nothing orderly or methodical about these preparations. Something was wrong, something more pressing than the Scots’ invasion of far-off Northumbria.

He and Edmund dismounted, tossed their reins to a groom, and went into the hall. Here, too, all was chaos, except for a table full of scribes who sat writing furiously on wax tablets. Instructions from the king to his royal thegns, Athelstan guessed. He paused to address a steward who was hurling curses at a trio of slaves that was frantically packing silver candlesticks and goblets into chests.

‘What is amiss?’ he asked.

‘Danish ships have been sighted at Sandwich, my lord. We’ve not been told yet where we are to go, but word has come down that we are leaving on the morrow.’

Athelstan glanced at his brother and knew that they were thinking the same thing. Time had just run out.

Inside the royal apartment, the king sat at a central table with a small circle of advisers about him. Athelstan, flicking his gaze around the chamber, found Emma in an alcove lit by a bank of candles. Her Norman priest, Father Martin, stood at a writing table beside her, his stylus moving swiftly across the parchment laid out before him.

Emma must have heard them enter, for she looked up just then and their eyes met, and held, and the silent communion that was both torment and consolation flashed between them. Then she looked away, and he turned his attention to the men around the king. His younger brothers were there, as was Ælfric, Ealdorman of Hampshire. Bishop Ælfheah was there too, and then he corrected himself, for the man who had been bishop of Winchester was now archbishop of Canterbury – one of the wisest appointments his father had ever made. There were several lesser lords among the assembly as well, and he noted with misgiving that Eadric of Shrewsbury stood at the king’s right hand.

With Edmund right behind him, he made his way through the men gathered about the table. The king drew his gaze from a roughly drawn map that covered most of the table to frown at them and, to Athelstan’s surprise, gestured them to come closer.

‘I had not thought to see you here,’ his father said, ‘but your arrival is timely. You’ve heard?’

‘Yes,’ Athelstan replied. Apparently it took the threat of a Viking army to win him his father’s regard. He peered at the map. ‘How large is their force?’

‘Sixty ships, curse them. Near two thousand men. They have already begun to move west from Sandwich.’ He expelled a breath and sat back heavily in his chair. ‘I had not expected them to come so soon,’ he murmured. ‘I thought we had another month at least.’

‘Is it Swein who leads them?’ Athelstan asked.

‘No, but that is the only good news,’ his father said. ‘With the harvests not yet in we will be short on men and on food stores. Christ!’ He ran his hand wearily over his eyes. ‘We shall have to fortify the burhs across Wessex and strike at them piecemeal, harry their flanks like midges in a swamp.’

Athelstan glanced at the faces around the table and found there little relish for this plan. It was what they had done for years, and for years it had been a tactic that had led to failure. What they needed to do was to bring a massive army against the shipmen and beat them back into the sea, but England was ill prepared for such an endeavour. Any army they could raise would be composed for the most part of men whose hands were more used to grasping the handles of a plough than the hilt of a sword, while their enemies would be fierce Danish shipmen who were weapon-trained and battle-ready.

Athelstan turned to the archbishop. ‘If they strike at Canterbury, will the city be able to hold against them?’ he asked.

‘Our walls are in good repair,’ Ælfheah replied, ‘so we can withstand them for some days.’

Athelstan nodded. ‘Likely they have not come to lay siege but to strike quickly and grab whatever is not nailed down. It is the smaller towns and abbeys of Kent and Surrey that will be vulnerable if the raiders sail westward’ – he moved his finger along the line that marked England’s southern coast – ‘and if they decide to strike to the north it will be the towns along our eastern shores at risk.’

The king was frowning at the map. ‘I will call out the forces of Mercia and Wessex, all the men who can be spared from the fields and even many who cannot. Their commanders will meet me at Windsor to organize the defence, but it will take time for them to gather. Meantime we must get fighting men into the burhs in the southeast as soon as may be. The Danes will not stray far from their ships, so we should strive to keep them confined to the coast.’ He turned to Ælfric. ‘How many of your house guards are here with you?’

‘Thirty men, my lord, all well armed and mounted,’ the ealdorman replied.

‘Good. You will lead them to Rochester and summon the fyrd of Kent to you there. You will have to scour the countryside for whatever provisions you need.’

Ælfric nodded, and the king turned to Eadric. ‘You will go north into Mercia, muster whatever force you can there, and come to me at Windsor as soon as you may. Athelstan, you will ride with the queen’s Norman retainers to Lewes and summon the men of Sussex. Provision them however you can. Take Edrid and Edwig with you. Edmund, you and Edgar and your men will escort your sisters and the queen to Winchester and take charge of the fyrd there. Do not attempt to meet the shipmen in a pitched battle.’

That last order was directed to all of them, but Athelstan found the king’s faded blue eyes looking intently into his own and he knew that it was meant for him more than anyone else. His father judged him too eager for battle. In this instance, his father was probably right.

‘If the Danes approach,’ the king continued, ‘you should have plenty of warning. Gather the villagers and their livestock into the burhs and defend them there. For now we can do little more than try to minimize the damage.’

Minimize the damage. Athelstan had to swallow a curse, for this was not the time to question a policy that his father had followed for twenty years. Jesu! It near maddened him that once again the best outcome that they could hope for was to confine their enemy to the coast. Three years ago that tactic had failed utterly, and the Danish army had thrust its way into Wiltshire. Two years ago the shipmen had pillaged and burned fifty miles into East Anglia. How far would their enemy strike this time? How many towns would be ravaged?

Dear God. If they could do no more than minimize the damage, then they were defeated before they’d even begun to fight.

Emma had listened to the king’s commands with growing dismay. His decision to entrust her son into Edmund’s care without the benefit of her Norman house guards to protect him filled her with foreboding, and now she rose swiftly and approached the king.

‘My lord, I would speak,’ she said, and the men around him gave way so that she could kneel beside his chair.

She was risking his displeasure by daring to appeal to him in front of his council, but she had no choice. To trust her son to Edmund’s care would be to take a far greater risk.

‘What is it?’ he snapped.

‘I would go with you to Windsor, my lord,’ she said. ‘I cannot be seen to cower in Winchester like a nun behind cloistered walls while the king and his sons face this threat. My place, and that of our son, is at your side. I beg you, husband; do not send us away from you.’

She saw the surprise on his face, and then the frown as he considered her words. He would not imagine the real reason behind her request – that she feared what Edmund might do if she and her son were in his power. Only Athelstan would know what was in her mind, and she risked a quick glance in his direction and saw him scowling at her. He would think her fears were groundless; but Athelstan trusted Edmund, and she did not.

‘A war council is no place for a woman,’ Æthelred objected.

‘My lord king.’ Archbishop Ælfheah was standing beside her, and now she felt the gentle pressure of his hand upon her shoulder. ‘The queen’s request bears some merit. At Windsor you will meet many nobles whose lands will be under no immediate threat from the Danes, and they will not be eager to take up arms. Some of them may even bear you ill will. If your nobles see that your sons have taken the field and that the queen herself stands firmly by your side during this time of trial, it can only help your cause.’

He did not mention Ælfhelm, but Emma guessed that the name was echoing in all their minds. She did not doubt that the new archbishop had dispensed more than a few blistering words of condemnation into the king’s ear over Ælfhelm’s slaying at Shrewsbury. And when the council session began this morning Ælfheah had made no secret of his conviction that the arrival of the Danes was God’s punishment for the king’s treachery towards his ealdorman.

Now she called down a silent benediction upon Ælfheah and held her breath as she waited for the king’s decision. At last he waved an impatient hand at her.

‘Whether you go to Windsor or Winchester makes little difference to me, but I will ride at dawn. If you wish to attend me to the war council, then make certain that you do not delay my departure, for I will not wait for you.’

‘Thank you, my lord,’ she said. ‘I shall be ready.’

She rose to her feet and left the chamber, leaving Father Martin to finish the correspondence they had begun together.

As she strode through the great hall she heard someone call her name, and when she paused and turned, she saw that Archbishop Ælfheah had followed her from the king’s chamber.

‘I would speak with you, my lady, if you can spare me a moment.’

‘Of course,’ she answered as they left the hall and entered the shade of the covered walkway that ran the length of the building. She paused there and touched his arm. ‘Thank you, Archbishop, for convincing the king to grant my request. It means a great deal to me.’

Ælfheah had ever been a friend to her, as well as to the king and to his sons. As they stood face-to-face, his wise grey eyes kind, she could see the worry in the frown that creased his forehead. Of course he was worried. The Danish raiders were heading west from Sandwich, and Canterbury was directly in their path.

‘Your request was a shrewd one, my lady,’ he replied, ‘and courageous. Your mother, I think, would have done the same were she in your place.’ He placed his hand upon hers and smiled. ‘Indeed, she is the reason I wish to speak with you, for as you know I am recently come from your brother’s court.’

‘My mother is well, I hope,’ Emma said quickly. Ælfheah had brought her several letters from her family, and she had read nothing in them to alarm her.

‘She is well, yes,’ he assured her. ‘I think she may outlive us all. She is a formidable woman, and in the short time that I spent in her household I developed a great admiration for her. Your brother is wise to look to her for advice and assistance.’

‘He places great trust in her,’ Emma said. Once, she had thought to play the same role, of adviser and confidante, to her husband, the king. Æthelred had quickly disabused her of that idea.

‘She has skills that make her particularly valuable to Richard. I happened to observe an audience that your brother held with an envoy from the Danish king.’ Her alarm at hearing this must have shown on her face, for he added quickly, ‘Normandy’s cordial relations with Denmark are, in some ways, to our advantage; nevertheless, the king will hear no word of the envoy from me. What I found of most interest in the exchange, though, was that your mother acted as interpreter. She can speak to the Northmen in their language, and as I listened I wondered if that gift had been passed to her daughter.’

She looked away from him, not knowing how to answer, not wanting to lie to a man she trusted and admired. But she had kept her knowledge of Danish as secret as she could. Margot and Wymarc knew; and Athelstan, who had guessed her secret years ago. There were two others: Swein Forkbeard and his son, who had held her captive one wretched summer’s day that had seemed to last an eternity. She had not been able to stop herself from cursing them in their own tongue.

She looked into Ælfheah’s face again, and knew that in hesitating she had already given him an answer.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘The king does not know, I take it. But my lady, this skill of yours may be of use to him should he need to negotiate with our enemy! It could earn you a place at his side if—’

‘It could also earn me the enmity of those who would accuse me – and my brother – of sympathizing with the Danes.’ It was what Edmund would believe of her, if he knew. It would be like handing him a weapon to use against her and against her son. ‘Although you might not speak to the king of my brother’s dealings with that Danish envoy, Archbishop, others will.’

His eyes now were grave and she did not wish to hear whatever he was about to say. She did not want this man to think badly of her.

‘I recognize the risks,’ he said, ‘but I beg you to give me your trust in this matter. Give me leave to reveal your secret if I see the need to do so. It will not be done lightly, I promise you.’

She hesitated again.

She trusted the archbishop, of course, but in the world of the court, knowledge was power. Whoever learned her secret from him would hold mastery of a kind over her, just as Ælfheah did now. Nevertheless, this man was one of the wisest at court, numbered among the king’s oldest friends and most trusted counsellors. It would be wrong to hinder him from using all the tools at his disposal for England’s benefit, should he have need of them.

‘I give you my leave,’ she said. Perhaps the situation might never arise. And if it did, she must hope that she could find a way to use it to her advantage.

‘I will guard your secret with my life,’ he said, taking her hand and clasping it between his own. ‘I give you my oath on that.’ For a long moment he searched her face, then he smiled. ‘You are very like your mother, Emma, and you are wise, I think, beyond your years. Should you ever again need me to intercede with the king on your behalf, you have but to ask.’ He made the sign of the cross on her forehead, whispered a blessing in Latin, then squeezed her hand. ‘Now I will take leave of you, for both of us, I believe, have much to do.’

She parted from him to hurry towards her quarters, for he was right – she had a great deal to do if she was to leave with the king at first light. As she walked she pondered all that Ælfheah had said to her.

She believed that her mother would have approved of her request to accompany the king to his battle council. But if Gunnora had ever done such a thing – and Emma suspected that she had – it would have stemmed from her desire to support her husband and to stand beside the man she loved. In that, she and her mother differed.

Her own decision was more a matter of expedience. She was the mother of the heir, and so she must, perforce, be the king’s ally. But it was a bitter alliance, for there was no affection and little respect between them.

He used her body at his whim, but in the four years that she had been wed to him he sought neither her company nor her advice. Her presence at his council table would not change that. Nevertheless, she would learn a great deal and, most important, Edward would be with her, and far out of the reach of his half-brother Edmund.

Sweet Virgin. She wished that she could trust Edmund as Athelstan did. Certainly she admired the loyalty he showed his eldest brother and she even respected Edmund’s determination to see Athelstan inherit the throne. But he was far too much like his father, and that was the cause of her mistrust.

She could not dismiss the fear that, like Æthelred, Edmund would not baulk at murder to accomplish his ends.

Chapter Eleven

August 1006

Holderness

Riding along a narrow track in Alric’s wake, Elgiva guided her horse across a shallow stream, one of several that had flowed across their path today. A heavy fog hung in the air, thick as a woollen veil. As she wiped her wet face yet again, she decided that the people of Holderness must be all but invisible. She had seen a few scattered villages early on, their fields planted in long strips of rye or oats; and there had been the occasional flock of forlorn-looking sheep barely discernible through the mist. But for the most part this seemed to be a vaporous land, eerie and empty, as if everything alive had been sucked out of it.

Already she hated it, and she was determined to leave this miserable place as soon as ever she could.

Bored, because there was little of interest to see, she reflected on the events that had brought her here. It had taken far longer than she could have anticipated – nearly four months when she tallied the weeks together. Alric had found them a ship in Chester the very day they had entered the town and, tucked among bales of leather and tuns of salt, they had set sail with the morning tide. That ship had taken them only as far as a port belonging to one of the Wælisc kingdoms, and they had been stranded there for – how long had it been? Two weeks? Three? However long it was, it had seemed longer, stuck in a fishing hamlet that was nothing more than a scatter of shabby crofts beside the sea. When they at last found another vessel to carry them further south, it reeked of fish.

Then Alric had found a trader hauling tin from Cornwall to Southamtun – a port much too close to Æthelred’s royal city of Winchester to suit them, but they had no choice. There the weather had turned against them, and she had lost count of the days she spent penned up, this time in the guest chamber of a squalid harbourside inn, fearing that if she stepped outside someone from the court might see and recognize her. That was where she’d learned of her brothers’ torture and death, and she hoped never to see that foul place again in her life.

When at last the winds allowed, they had boarded a vessel bound for Hythe, and there caught another ship that carried them past the Isle of Thanet to East Anglia. There were three more ships after that, traders like the others, each one, it seemed to her, less seaworthy than the one before. None of them had afforded protection from sun or wind or rain, and the only seat she’d ever had was the small, wooden chest that Alric had purchased before they left Chester that held her cyrtel and undergown.

Her men’s garb had kept her safe enough from the shipmen, although she had seen more than one brute cast covetous eyes on her fine woollen cloak. Alric’s ready knife, she felt certain, had kept any thieving hands at bay, but nothing could protect her from the stench of the pitch and fish oil that permeated the ships. Nor could anything dispel the fear and sick dread that rose in her throat whenever a sudden squall battered them.

She had learned to avoid eating anything in the hours before they boarded, but how she hated the motion of the waves! They were always the same, heaving the vessels with such force that she had to keep her mouth clamped shut to keep from spewing bile. Even now, although the water roads were behind her, the rhythm of her horse’s gait made her stomach churn.

At least there had been welcome news last night when they had debarked at last at Beverley. King Æthelred had taken up arms against a Danish army that was ravaging somewhere in Wessex. She hoped that it was true. She hoped that a Danish axe would find him and gut him. It was because of Æthelred that her father and brothers were dead, because of him that she was riding across this miserable flat bog of a land.

A damp breeze tugged at her cloak and clawed uncomfortably at her legs, for she was still clad in a man’s tunic and breecs. Her neck was cold too, for her thick hair was braided and tucked into a boy’s woollen cap. As she pulled her hood over her head for warmth, Alric hissed a warning and brought their horses to a halt. The sound of hoofbeats echoed from somewhere ahead of them, growing louder as whoever was out there came nearer. Alric drew his sword. Now she heard horses behind them as well, and afraid that the king’s men had tracked her down at last, she searched wildly about for somewhere to hide. But there was not even a rock or tree visible in this barren wasteland. She snatched the small knife from her belt, clutching it so tightly that her palm hurt. Then she could do nothing but wait.

The noise from two companies of men grew louder, competing with the terrified beating of her heart. Her mount began a nervous skittering, and she pulled hard at the reins to steady it as riders burst through the drifts of fog. In a moment she and Alric were surrounded, and it was only when he called out a greeting in what she thought was Danish that she was able to catch a shallow breath, for now she recognized Thurbrand among the riders.

He was as massive as she remembered – tall, wide-shouldered, barrel-chested, with a broad face framed by thin black locks. His beard was full and wild, and she shuddered to think what might be living in it. But his cloak was clasped with an intricate brooch of gold, and its fur trim rippled as he touched his fist to his shoulder in a gesture of greeting.

‘You certainly took your time getting here,’ he growled at Alric. ‘My men have been shadowing you ever since you left Grimsby, keeping an eye out, you might say. We had king’s men nosing about last month – mean-spirited bastards asking questions about a black-haired beauty.’ He turned to look at her then, and she saw his eyes travel from her bound breasts down to her toes. ‘My men sent word that you were garbed as a boy. I could hardly credit it, having seen you in your father’s hall.’ His mouth twisted in a leer. ‘I see I was wrong.’ He turned his horse to face back along the track from which he’d come. ‘But we must hasten. There are folk awaiting us at Ringbrough.’

It was hardly the courteous greeting she had looked for, but she had no chance to rebuke him. A moment later she found herself riding swiftly through the mist with armed horsemen on either side of her. She cursed under her breath. How could she have forgotten what a brute Thurbrand was? He had all the courtesy of a boar, and now that she’d seen Holderness, she would not be surprised to discover that he was not only uncivilized but half-mad as well.

Her decision to come to him for help seemed far less wise in this light, but it was too late to do anything about it. She could only wonder uneasily who was waiting for them at Ringbrough, whatever Ringbrough may be.

As it turned out, Ringbrough was a small manor – far smaller than she had expected. It was set within a palisade among fields of rye bordered by a forest of oak and ash. There was a hint of salt on the breeze, and she guessed that they must be very near the sea. The afternoon was far advanced as they entered the compound through a narrow wooden gate guarded by armed men. When she heard the latch close behind her she could think of nothing so much as a trap springing shut, and she felt a sudden tremor of apprehension.

As Alric helped her from her horse, she glanced towards the centre of the yard, where a timbered hall – half the length of her father’s – stood flanked by smaller buildings. It was not long, but it was tall, with a high, curved roof ornamented with soaring crossbeams carved in the shape of beasts gaping with fierce, open mouths, like the monsters on the prows of dragon ships. She did not like the menacing look of that hall, and when Thurbrand grasped her elbow and would have led her inside, she wrested her arm away and rounded on him.

‘Why have you brought me here?’ she demanded. ‘I’ve heard my father describe the massive stronghold of the mighty Thurbrand. This is not it.’

‘Aye, that’s so. But what we do today must have few witnesses, and those only men that I can trust. Get you in.’

Now her fear was as wide as a river in flood.

‘I will not,’ she snapped, ‘until you tell me what you are about.’ And likely not even then, if she could help it.

‘Lady Elgiva,’ he growled, taking her arm again and pushing her towards the open door, ‘I stand here in your father’s stead. You have nothing to fear.’

Yet she was afraid, for she saw her father’s hand in this, reaching out from the grave to bring her to ruin. She was afraid that some bastard of a Dane was waiting in there for her, and that the marriage she had tried so desperately to avoid was about to come to pass. But she was not strong enough to resist Thurbrand, who simply dragged her through the doorway as if she were made of straw.

Inside, the far end of the hall was lit by thick candles set on a trestle table, where four men sat laughing and drinking. She did not recognize any of them, and she turned around to look to Alric for help, but there was only darkness behind her. As Thurbrand propelled her towards the strangers their talk and laughter died, and she felt their gazes burn her skin. She was thrust none too gently onto a stool next to one of them. Volleys of words shot back and forth among the men, but she understood nothing.

When a servant appeared from the shadows to set a cup before her, she reached for it eagerly and took a long swallow, then coughed as the liquid burned its way down her throat. It was beor, a drink more potent than wine or mead, but she was thirsty. She wiped her streaming eyes, then drank some more while she peered at the faces around the table and considered her options. The usual tricks for cozening a man would be of no use to her here. She did not want to charm them but repel them. And if her men’s clothes and the stench from a week’s worth of travel filth did not do it, likely nothing would.

She decided that the fellow seated directly across from her must be their leader, for he was covered in gold. There were gold rings on his fingers and arms, and a heavy gold chain hung about his neck. Well, if he was to be her husband, he appeared to be rich enough to suit her, but, Jesu, he was ancient. Still, he might well die soon, and that would be an advantage.

His long hair, tied back in the Danish fashion, was stark white, and his face was so seamed and weather-worn that she was reminded of the chalk cliffs that she had seen on the southern coast. His black eyes scanned her as if he were calculating her worth, and when she arched an insolent brow at him, one corner of his mouth lifted, as if she’d amused him. He flicked a finger, and Thurbrand pulled the hood and woollen cap from her head, releasing the long braid that fell to her waist.

‘Do not touch me, you whoreson,’ she snarled, batting his hand away. ‘Who are these men? I came to you in trust and you have betrayed me.’

‘No betrayal, lady,’ he said smoothly. ‘I am merely completing the bargain that your father agreed to.’

‘But I did not agree to it!’ She stood up, knocking over her stool and glaring at him.

He responded by striking her so hard that she lost her balance. She would have fallen but for the man who occupied the stool beside hers. He caught her, and she heard him shout something at Thurbrand. But the blow and the beor made the room spin, and she was only dimly aware that in the moments that followed, her hands were clasped hard between a man’s calloused palms and more words were spoken that she did not comprehend.

‘It is done,’ she heard Thurbrand say then. ‘Greet your husband, lady. His name is Cnut.’

She looked up into eyes as dark as those that had bored into her from across the table. But these eyes belonged to a far younger man – younger even than she was, she guessed. His beard, like his hair, glinted copper in the candlelight while those dark eyes considered her with a steady, solemn gaze. He slipped a fat gold ring from one of his fingers and placed it upon one of hers. She studied the ring and dredged up a smile for him.

Then, still smiling, she spat in his face.

Elgiva could not say how long it took for her head to finally clear from a haze of confusion, anger, and beor. She remembered being bathed and clothed in a clean shift of white linen. Now she was alone, her hair combed and plaited, and she was lying on a curtained bed that was strewn with furs. Despite the fire that burned on the small hearth in the centre of the chamber, she was cold. She sat up and, wrapping one of the furs around her shoulders, noticed a cup on the table next to the bed. She picked it up, sniffed it, and tasted it. The liquid inside was hot – a herbal infusion of some kind, sweetened with honey. She sipped it gingerly as she tried to make sense of what had happened to her.

She appeared to be in a woman’s bower – the rafters above her head intricately carved with flowers and birds, and painted in bright hues. The linen hangings that covered the walls were embroidered with sailing ships and sea monsters. A loom stood against one wall, and next to it several coffers were stacked one atop another. She wondered idly what they held, but she was too tired to get up and inspect them. Instead she lay back upon the pillows and saw that some fool had scattered flower petals there. Jesu! Did they think a few blossoms would placate her for having to spread her legs for a filthy Dane?

That was what she would be forced to do, assuming her hazy memory was correct and she had actually been wed to that youth in the hall. There had been no priest to bless the nuptials, but that made no difference. Whoever he was, he could claim her as his handfast wife once he’d bedded her. No doubt he would set about that soon enough.

The chamber door opened slowly and she sat up, expectant and wary. A woman entered, perhaps several years younger than she was, thin as a stick, with flaming hair that hung in plaits to her waist. Her green woollen cyrtel was belted with a silver chain, and she wore strings of amber beads around her neck.

Someone of status, then.

Another woman slipped into the room behind the first. This one would be a servant or slave, for she was gowned in a shift as grey and plain as dirt, and she moved as silently as a shadow. She went to a stool in the corner and, pulling a spindle and wool from a basket, she began to spin.

Like one of the Norns, Elgiva thought, one of the mystical creatures that the Norse believed in, who spun the thread of fate for each living being. Even as she thought it, the woman looked up with an expression so dark and knowing that Elgiva instinctively flinched and looked away.

She is but a slave, she told herself, and no Norn. There is nothing to fear from her.

She turned instead to the woman in green, who was still hesitating near the door.

‘Who are you and what do you want?’ The question was probably pointless. She’d heard nothing but Danish spoken since she’d arrived in this miserable place.

‘I am Catla,’ the young woman whispered. She looked nervous, her eyes enormous and her skin pale as milk. ‘I am wife to Thurbrand, and he has bid me attend you until your lord comes.’ She smiled weakly and gave her head a little shake. ‘I cannot abide the hall when the men get …’ She waved her hand helplessly.

Dear God. This waif was hardly a match for the bearlike Thurbrand. He must chew her up and spit her out daily to make her look so frightened. But at least the girl spoke English and might be able to tell her something useful.

‘Sit here, then.’ Elgiva gestured to the bed but she could not bring herself to smile. She was still too furious at the trick Thurbrand had played on her. ‘I won’t bite you. Tell me of the man they’ve foisted on me. Do you know who he is?’

The girl came closer but she did not sit down.

She reminded Elgiva of a fawn or a rabbit, frightened of its own shadow.

‘He is Cnut, lady. Son of Swein, son of Harald, son of Gorm.’ She recited it as if she were a skald about to begin a tale, or as if it had been beaten into her.

‘Swein,’ Elgiva repeated. ‘Is that the man I saw in the hall, clad all in gold?’

Catla gave a quick nod. ‘He landed on Lammas Day, and he was furious when he did not find you here. It’s as well that you arrived today because by tomorrow he and his son would have been gone.’

Elgiva closed her eyes. Another day, and she would have escaped this fate. How the Norns must be laughing at her.

When she opened her eyes again, Catla was gesturing towards the caskets that stood beside the loom.

‘King Swein bid me tell you that everything here is yours. The bed, the hangings, everything in the boxes you see there, even Tyra’ – she nodded towards the grey woman with the spindle – ‘belongs to you. She will be your body servant. They are all morning gifts from Cnut.’

But Elgiva was no longer listening, for the words King Swein had struck her ears like a thunderbolt. She thrust herself from the bed and crossed the chamber to lift the lid of one of the coffers that stood against the wall. It was filled with silver – rings and chains, cups and plates, crosses, candlesticks, and medallions. She turned to another coffer and inside she found golden arm rings, enamelled necklaces, finger rings set with precious gems – a Viking hoard of gold and jewels.

She knew now, who it was that she had wed. She was the handfast wife of the son of King Swein of Denmark. It must be. She had never heard of any other king named Swein, and the wealth in these chests argued that she was the bride of a king’s son.

She closed her eyes, remembering the prophecy of her old nurse, Groa.

You will be a queen, and your children will be kings.

She had always believed that she must marry Æthelred or one of his brood for that to come true. It had never dawned on her that there might be another way. But there was, and this was it. This marriage was an alliance that would inspire northern lords like Thurbrand, men dissatisfied with the kingship of Æthelred, to pledge themselves to the warrior king from Denmark – and to his son. Æthelred might one day find himself ruler of only the southern half of England, while Swein held all the rest.

And one day, when Swein died and Cnut was crowned king after him, she would be queen beside him.

How long had her father been negotiating this marriage? And why had the fool not confided in her, not told her that it was Cnut she was to wed? She would have helped him, not betrayed him. If he’d had the good sense to trust her with his great secret, he might still be alive and her brothers would not have been tortured and left to die.

Her father, damn him, had wasted all their lives.

The sound of voices outside brought her bitter musing to an abrupt end. She made it back to the bed just before the door was flung wide and the room filled with drunken men. Two of them carried torches, and when one of them stumbled towards the bed, she cried out for fear he would fire the hangings. But he righted himself and she saw that it was Alric, ogling her and grinning like an idiot.

She scrambled to the top of the bed and pulled the furs up against her breasts, making the men howl with laughter. Catla, the little coward, slipped out the door like a shadow, but Elgiva knew that for her there would be no escape. She was wed to Cnut, and his kinsmen had come to watch him plough his furrow and plant a babe in her belly. Jesu, if they expected to find blood on the sheets afterwards they were in for a disappointment, for she was no virgin.

She glanced at the king, who was staring at her wolfishly, his mouth set in a leer. Would they kill her in the morning because she was no maid?

No. They needed her to claim the allegiance of her kin.

She had no more time to think about that, for Cnut had come to the foot of the bed and he was surveying her with eyes that showed no trace of drunkenness. He pulled off his tunic and skinned his breecs away as the men cheered and pounded their feet on the floor – for encouragement, she supposed. But Cnut was naked now, standing tall in the torchlight that gleamed on his skin, and judging by the way his rod stood at attention, the encouragement was hardly necessary.

Well, she was not going to just sit here like a stick of wood, like a frightened little Catla.

She drew her feet under her, stood up on the mattress, and slowly walked its length to face her husband. A shout of anticipation went up from the men, and Cnut eyed her warily, perhaps thinking she might spit at him again. But she knew who he was now, and she had no qualms about consummating this marriage. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him, drawing his tongue into her mouth. He responded by slipping his hands beneath her shift and pulling her roughly against him. Beneath the pounding of blood in her ears she heard the howls of the men as Cnut guided her back down to the mattress.

He sheathed himself inside her and she wrapped her legs about his hips, moving to the rhythm that he set. His thrusts were quick and hard and deep, and it did not take long. Well, what was she, after all, but a prize to be plundered? When he collapsed on top of her the Danes sent up a roar. The slave, Tyra, came forward, and for an instant their eyes met and held. Elgiva felt her skin prickle under that knowing gaze, and she breathed a sigh of relief when Tyra drew the curtains around the bed and that cold glance was hidden.

They were alone after that, and as she lay spooned against Cnut beneath the furs, he murmured to her in Danish. She did not understand him, and she was glad when he finally fell asleep, his hand cupped possessively over her breast. She was uncomfortable in his arms, though, and in spite of her weariness she lay awake far into the night. She tried to conjure up her future, tried to imagine herself in a great hall wearing a golden circlet, but the only images that rose in her mind were the faces of her father and her brothers, who stared at her with cold, accusing eyes. At last she fell asleep, and she dreamed of a woman in grey who sat spinning, and the golden thread that fell from her fingers shrivelled into dust.

The next day, gowned in her own shift and cyrtel, and bedecked with some of her bridal gold, she followed Cnut through the hall to the dais, where King Swein waited to greet her. Alric, looking haggard after last night’s celebration, fell in behind her, whispering that he had been commanded to act as interpreter.

Cnut took her hand, standing at her side as Swein pinned her with those black eyes of his, eyeing her belly as if he had the power to discern whether Cnut’s son was already growing there. She resented that look and resented the way this marriage had come about, although she was satisfied enough with her husband – assuming that, in the end, she got what she wanted.

‘I wish to know,’ she said, not waiting for the Danish king to speak first, ‘when King Swein will take the crown of England as his own.’

She watched Swein’s face as Alric translated her question, and she thought she caught a flicker of amusement in the king’s eyes.

‘When you give Cnut a son,’ the reply came back, ‘blending English blood with Danish, I will wrest the crown from Æthelred. Your father’s death stalled our preparations, but we will begin again. You have but to do your part.’

She nodded. It would do, for now. She would complete her part of the bargain. After all, even the whey-faced Emma had finally produced a son. Surely she must be as fecund as Emma, although – the alarming thought fluttered into her mind – she had not conceived in the months that she had slept beside the king.

She reminded herself, though, of the prophecy that Groa had sworn to her was true, that she was destined to wear a crown, destined to bear sons who would be kings. So it was foretold and, therefore, she assured herself, no power on earth could prevent it.

Windsor, Berkshire

Æthelred paced his inner chamber as he waited for Emma to respond to his summons. It was late and he was weary but, by Christ, he would not face another night in his bed alone. His dreams were a torment, filled with phantoms – the dead come to haunt him. His brother, his mother, even his father had troubled his sleep for a week. Their faces, decaying and putrid beneath golden crowns, hovered over him, as if they would warn him of some coming disaster. Last night it had been Elgiva, beautiful and naked, riding him hard until suddenly she was no longer Elgiva. It was her father whose dead weight pressed upon his chest and whose rough, bearded mouth covered his own, drawing all the breath from his lungs until he woke, crying out in terror.

The menace of that nightmare still clung to him, yet it offered a glimmer of hope, for it could mean that Elgiva, too, was now rotting in some unhallowed grave.

So far, she had not been discovered in either Mercia or Northumbria, and he dared to hope that some mischance had befallen her – the last of Ælfhelm’s brood of vipers.

Alive, wedded to some powerful Danish lord, she could be a threat – a rallying point for Ælfhelm’s disgruntled northern kin.

Dead, she could do no more than haunt him.

He paused at his work-table to finger a pile of scrolls and wax tablets that bore news from Kent, where the Danes continued to burn and plunder. His fyrds were doing exactly as he had ordered, shepherding his people into the burhs to protect them. From within the safety of their fortress walls, though, they had to watch as their homes were torched and their livestock driven away. They were powerless to stop it, for they had not the numbers to confront the better-armed shipmen and their savage leader – some bastard, he saw scrawled on one of the tablets, named Tostig.

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