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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013

Copyright © Patricia Bracewell 2013

Map © Matt Brown 2013

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Cover photography © Richard Jenkins

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: 9780007481767

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007481750

Version: 2015-09-29

For Lloyd, Andrew, and Alan

The English Court, 1001–1005

Æthelred II, Anglo-Saxon king of England

Children of the English king, in birth order:

Athelstan

Ecbert

Edmund

Edrid

Edwig

Edward

Edgar

Edyth

Ælfgifu (Ælfa)

Wulfhilde (Wulfa)

Mathilda

Leading Nobles and Ecclesiastics

Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria

Ufegeat, his son

Wulfheah, his son (Wulf)

Elgiva, his daughter

Ælfric, ealdorman of Hampshire

Ælfgar, his son

Hilde, his granddaughter

Ælfheah, bishop of Winchester

Godwine, ealdorman of Lindsey

Leofwine, ealdorman of Western Mercia

Wulfstan, archbishop of Jorvik and bishop of Worcester

The Norman Court, 1001–1005

Richard II, duke of Normandy

Robert, archbishop of Rouen, brother of the duke

Judith, duchess of Normandy

Gunnora, dowager duchess of Normandy

Mathilde, sister of the duke

Emma, sister of the duke

The Danish Royals

Swein Forkbeard, king of Denmark

Harald, his son

Cnut, his son

A.D. 978 In this year was King Edward slain at even-tide, at Corfe-gate, on the fifteenth before the kalends of April, and he was buried at Werham without any royal honours. Nor was a worse deed than this done since men came to Britain … Æthelred was consecrated king. In this same year a bloody sky was often seen, most clearly at midnight, like fire in the form of misty beams. As dawn approached, it glided away.

– The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Map

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

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-two

Author’s Note

Glossary

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Eve of St Hilda’s Feast, November 1001
Near Saltford, Oxfordshire

She made a circuit of the clearing among the oaks, three times round and three times back, whispering spells of protection. There had been a portent in the night: a curtain of red light had shimmered and danced across the midnight sky like scarlet silk flung against the stars. Once, in the year before her birth, such a light had marked a royal death. Now it surely marked another, and although her magic could not banish death, she wove the spells to ward disaster from the realm.

When her task was done she fed the fire that burned in the centre of the ancient stone ring, and sitting down beside it, she waited for the one who came in search of prophecy. Before the sun had moved a finger’s width across the sky, the figure of a woman, cloaked and veiled, stood atop the rise, her hand upon the sentinel stone. Slowly she followed the path down through the trees and into the giants’ dance until she, too, took her place beside the fire, with silver in her palm.

‘I would know my lady’s fate,’ she said.

The silver went from hand to hand, and against her will, the seer glimpsed a heart, broken and barren, that loved with a dark and twisted love. But the silver had been given, and at her nod, a lock of hair was laid upon the flames. She searched for visions in the fire, and they tumbled and roiled until they hurt her eyes and scored her heart.

‘Your lady will be bound to a mighty lord,’ she said at last, ‘and her children will be kings.’

But because of the darkness in that heart across the fire, she said nothing of the other, of the Lady who would journey from afar, and of the two life threads so knotted and tangled that they could not be pulled asunder for a lifetime or for ever. She did not speak of the green land that would burn to ash in the days to come, nor of the innocents who would die, all for the price of a throne.

There would be portents in the sky again tonight, she knew, and high above her the stars would weep blood.

A.D. 1001 This year there was great commotion in England in consequence of an invasion by the Danes, who spread terror and devastation wheresoever they went, plundering and burning and desolating the country … They brought much booty with them to their ships, and thence they went into the Isle of Wight and nothing withstood them; nor any fleet by sea durst meet them; nor land force either. Then was it in every wise a heavy time, because they never ceased from their evil doings.

– The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

24th December 1001
Fécamp, Normandy

The winter of 1001 in northwestern Europe would have been recorded as the coldest and fiercest in seventy-five years, had anyone been keeping such records. In late December of that year, a storm tore out of the arctic north with terrible speed, blasting all of Europe but striking hardest at the two realms that faced each other across the Narrow Sea.

In Normandy, it began with a sudden drop in temperature and a freezing rain that coated the limbs of the precious fruit trees in the Seine’s fertile valley. A driving wind swept behind the rain, snapping brittle, frozen branches and scattering the promise of next summer’s harvest over wide, sleet-covered fields. For a full day and night the storm raged, and when the worst of it was spent, a light snow fell upon the wasted landscape as quietly as a benediction.

Watching from within their abbey walls, the monks of Jumièges and of Saint-Wandrille contemplated the loss of their apple crop, bowed their heads, and prayed for acceptance of God’s will. Peasant farmers, huddling together for warmth in frail, wooden cottages and fearing that the end of the world was come, prayed for deliverance. In the newly built ducal palace at Fécamp, where Duke Richard and his family had gathered to celebrate the season of Christ’s Mass, the duke’s fifteen-year-old sister, Emma, quietly pulled heavy boots over her thick woollen leggings and prayed that she would not waken her sleeping sister – to no avail.

‘What are you doing?’ Mathilde’s voice, raw and resonating with elder sister disapproval, emerged from a thick nest of bedclothes.

Emma continued to tug at a boot.

‘I am going down to the stables,’ she said.

She threw her sister a sidelong glance, trying to gauge her mood. Mathilde’s thin brown hair was pulled into a tight braid that gave her face a drawn, pinched look and added to the severity of the frown that she cast upon her younger sister.

‘You cannot go out in this storm,’ Mathilde protested. ‘You will catch your death.’ She started to say more but was racked by a sudden, cruel fit of coughing.

Emma went to her, snatched up the cup of watered wine from a table beside the bed, and held it for her sister to drink.

‘The snow has stopped,’ she said, as Mathilde sipped from the cup. ‘I will be fine.’

And unlike Mathilde, Emma thought to herself, she rarely took sick. Poor Mathilde. It was her misfortune to be the only small, dark-haired, sickly child in her mother’s brood of blond, vigorous giants – eight brothers and sisters, all told.

When her sister had drunk her fill, Emma snatched up a shawl from the foot of the bed and threw it over her thick, bright hair.

‘You are going to check on your wretched horse, I suppose.’ Mathilde’s voice was little more than a throaty growl. ‘I do not see why. God knows all of those creatures are tended with as much care as if they were children. It is mean of you to leave me here all alone.’

Emma, who loved the outdoors, who loved horses, dogs, and hunting, and who was happiest when she was riding along the Norman shore beneath high chalk cliffs, knew better than to try to explain her errand to Mathilde, who detested all of those things. Emma was sorry that Mathilde was ill and bored, but she would go mad if she could not breathe some fresh air and be alone for just a little while. The two of them had been pent up together within doors for three full days.

She lifted a heavy, fur-lined black cloak from its peg on the wall and threw it over her shoulders.

‘I will not be gone long,’ she said.

Mathilde, though, had thought of another objection.

‘What if the shipmen return while you are down there?’ she demanded. ‘You cannot trust those Danish brutes not to molest you if they come upon you alone and unprotected.’

Emma fastened her cloak beneath her chin, pondering this warning.

The Danish king, Swein Forkbeard, had petitioned her brother for winter harbour along Normandy’s northern coast, and Duke Richard, unwilling to offend the fierce warrior king, had granted it. To Richard’s fury, though, Forkbeard’s own ship and a dozen more had sailed into Fécamp’s harbour two days ago, forcing her brother out of courtesy to invite the king to join his family at the palace.

The king had accepted swiftly and had settled into her brother’s great hall with a score of his companions – rough, hard-faced warriors with only the thinnest gloss of civilization about them in spite of the wealth of gold that they flaunted on their wrists and arms. Mathilde, sick with the ague, had kept to her bed. Richard’s wife, Judith, only a few weeks out of childbed, had done the same. So it was Emma’s mother, Dowager Duchess Gunnora, with only her youngest daughter at her side, who had offered the king the welcome cup upon his arrival in the hall. The duchess, proud of her Danish heritage and her blood ties to the Danish throne, nevertheless had no illusions about Swein Forkbeard. She presented Emma to him with formal courtesy, then banished her daughter to the private quarters with all of the other young women.

Emma had not been sorry to go. Forkbeard had greeted her with cold, fiercely calculating eyes and a silent nod. His brooding gaze seemed to weigh her, as if she were not a woman but a commodity that could be bought and sold – a trinket that he might purchase in the market at Rouen. She had coloured beneath his fixed, brutal stare, and had wanted to take to her heels to escape it. But she had forced herself to walk slowly from the hall, chin held high, acutely aware of the shipmen all around her who raked her with merciless eyes.

These were men who made their living by murder and rape, men who had been baptized to Christ but whose souls still belonged to heathen gods, or so she had heard. Their grim, weather-scarred faces had haunted her dreams that night, and like her brothers, she wished that Forkbeard and his shipmen had never come to Fécamp. Today, though, the palace was emptied of Danes.

‘The shipmen have gone to the harbour to inspect their vessels for storm damage. They will likely not return until dark. I will be back long before that, and I promise I will keep you company then until we put out the candles.’ With that she slipped from the room before Mathilde could think of any other objections.

The courtyard was deserted as she made her way towards the stables, and the air was so frigid that it hurt to breathe. She followed the wall, grasping at its stones with one hand as she navigated the slippery mud and slush that had been churned up by men and horses. Emma’s snow-white mare, Ange, whickered a greeting, and Emma nuzzled the horse’s neck, warming her face against its thick winter coat. A moment later, though, she heard a commotion in the stable yard that worried her.

Could the men have returned so soon? Surely not all of them. They would have made a great deal more clamour.

Using Ange as a screen, Emma peered towards the wide doorway and saw Richard and Swein Forkbeard leading their mounts towards the stable. She had always thought her brother quite tall, but the Danish king bested him by half a head. They were the same age – both of them very old by her reckoning, for Richard had been born more than twenty years before Emma. But the king of the Danes, with his white hair and long white beard, worn forked and braided, looked far older. There was a sternness about Swein Forkbeard’s countenance, a hard-eyed ruthlessness that frightened her. He even frightened Richard, she was certain, although he masked it with courtesy.

She had no wish to greet the Danish king again, or to face her brother’s wrath at finding her here, so she shied behind her horse to wait for them to go away. They seemed in no hurry, in spite of the cold. Richard, in halting Danish, was relating the pedigree of the king’s mount and doing his best to explain what he looked for in breeding his horse stock.

She smiled at her brother’s clumsy efforts with Swein’s tongue. Like all of the Duchess Gunnora’s children, he had learned Danish at his mother’s knee. And like most of his siblings, he had abandoned it at an early age. Emma had been the only one to embrace it, and she could speak as fluently in Danish as she could in Frankish or Breton or Latin. She had even learned some of the English used by prelates who sometimes visited her brother from across the Narrow Sea.

Neither Richard nor her brother Robert, the archbishop, knew of Emma’s gift of tongues, as her mother called it. Gunnora had advised Emma to keep this remarkable skill a secret. Use it to listen, she had said, rather than to speak. You will be surprised at what you will learn.

Emma listened now and realized, with a start, that the conversation between her brother and the Danish king had moved from the breeding of horses to the breeding of children.

‘A marriage alliance would be in both our interests,’ Swein Forkbeard said. ‘I have two sons who need wives. One of your sisters might do, and you would gain much from such a marriage, I promise you. Of course, were you to reject it, you could lose a great deal.’ There was silence for a moment, and then the king said, his voice speculative, taunting, ‘How much, I wonder, are you prepared to lose?’

Emma covered her mouth with her hand, shocked by the clear threat in Forkbeard’s words. What would he do? Send shipmen to ravage Normandy unless Richard sent one of his sisters to Denmark to wed one of Forkbeard’s sons?

She held her breath, waiting for Richard’s reply.

‘My sisters are overly young to wed.’ Her brother’s fumbled words were so casual that Emma wondered if he had understood all that the Danish king had said.

‘Age matters little,’ Forkbeard replied, his tone amiable now. ‘My youngest son has seen only ten winters, but like his elder brother, he is already a skilled shipman and warrior. As for your sisters,’ he paused, and Emma twisted her fingers nervously in Ange’s mane as she waited for him to go on, ‘you must not be too tender in your care of them. The Lady Emma seems ripe for bedding. You would do well to breed her now, for a good price, or you might find that you have left it too late.’

Emma felt the blood rise to her face, humiliation and anger warring with shock and fear. Surely Richard would not agree to sell her to Denmark! It was a harsh, brutal place, barely Christian. Her family could trace their bloodline back to the northern lands, but that was in the past. Surely it was not part of their future. Denmark was a land of fierce men ruled by a ruthless king. Swein Forkbeard had not inherited his crown but had won it in a battle to the death waged against his own father. Richard could not allow her to marry into a family such as that!

Her blood pounded in her ears, and she had to strain to hear her brother’s response to Forkbeard’s words.

‘Your proposal does my family great honour,’ Richard said. ‘You will understand, of course,’ he went on, his voice smoothly persuasive in spite of his broken Danish, ‘that a betrothal is too delicate a matter to be settled quickly. There are many things to consider and to weigh, and as you know, I have two sisters. You have yet to meet the elder, who, by tradition, should naturally be the first to wed.’

She did not hear the Danish king’s reply, for the men’s voices faded, replaced by the clink of bridles as grooms led the horses to their stalls. Emma remained rooted to the spot where she stood, her face buried in Ange’s neck, her thoughts in turmoil over what she had heard.

Swein Forkbeard’s proposal must carry great weight with her brother. Richard was a realist. He would consider the sacrifice of a younger sister a small price to pay for Norman peace with Denmark. It would be terrible for the bride, though – banished to a hostile, distant land. Mathilde would hate it, even as Emma would. She felt her throat constrict at the very thought of it.

No, her brother could not do such a thing to either of his sisters. He would not send them so far away. He had wed their elder sisters to great lords in Brittany and Frankia, securing his borders and adding considerably to his treasure. Surely he would use Mathilde and herself in a similar manner, for Normandy’s border was long and Richard had need of allies.

But Richard was ambitious. A royal marriage, even to a son of the barbarous Swein Forkbeard, would enhance her brother’s prestige throughout Europe. Forkbeard may be a Viking warlord rather than a godly Christian king, but all of Europe feared him, and that made him a valuable ally. She could easily imagine Richard succumbing to that argument, and she feared what he might be plotting with the Danish king in his private chamber.

She whispered a few endearments into Ange’s ear, then, afraid that Forkbeard’s men might arrive hard upon his heels, she hurried back towards the palace. She would say nothing of what she had heard to Mathilde. Their mother, surely, would have some say in the matter, yet Emma was frightened for her elder sister.

A slender needle of anxiety began to prick her insides. She did not trust Richard.

25th December 1001
Rochester, Kent

In England that December the fierce snowstorm blinded and buried countless travellers caught on the high chalk downs of Wessex, even within a few short steps of shelter. Near Durham in Northumbria the snow piled so high on the thatched roof of Lord Thorkeld’s great hall that it collapsed of its own weight, burying the lord and his family and retainers, twenty folk in all. On the Isle of Wight a storm surge swept an entire village into the sea. In Devon the once prosperous towns of Pin-hoo and Clyst, their houses, workshops, and storerooms razed to the ground during the previous summer’s Danish raids, were buried beneath fifteen feet of snow, as if they had never existed.

In the king’s hall at Rochester, Æthelred II of England and his councillors sat at table for the winter feast swathed in furs against the bitter cold. Their mood would have been dour even had the weather been more moderate. They drank their Christmas ale with grim determination rather than pleasure, their company unleavened by the presence of any women. The king’s mother, a force at court for nearly twenty-five years, had gone to God some five weeks before, in November, on the Feast of St Hilda. The king’s lady wife, brought to childbed on Christmas Eve for the eleventh and final time, had breathed her last on Christmas morning. Her cold body lay beneath the vaulted wooden ceiling of the king’s chapel, mourned by her attendants. The child, born too soon and perhaps sensing his loss, found no comfort in the arms of his wet nurse. Whenever the roaring of the wind and the desultory muttering of men momentarily abated, his feeble cry wafted through the hall like the wail of a soul wandering between heaven and earth. The women tending the babe shook their heads, lips pursed. The child was not long for this world, they deemed, for he would not suck.

The men who kept company with the king at the high table gave little thought to the infant and his prospects, for Æthelred had sons a-plenty, several of them fully grown. What he lacked now was a wife, and they were determined to find him one, whether he would or no. They disagreed, however, on where to look for her.

King Æthelred, a man haunted by his past and troubled about his future, sat among them, his tall frame hunched over his silver plate and his right hand clenching a gilded drinking horn. Twenty-three years on the throne had seared creases into his face that were unusual for a man who had not yet seen forty winters. Telltale streaks of grey in his tawny hair testified to the hardship of rule, and the bent angle of his head beneath the thick, gold crown suggested that it was more burden than ornament.

The king, regarding his advisers with watery blue eyes, was well aware of the line of division among them with regard to his marital prospects. The men with lands in the north, led by Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria, would urge him to wed Ælfhelm’s daughter Elgiva – a beautiful witch of a girl as ambitious, he suspected, as her father. A marriage there would strengthen the bond between the king and the northern lords, whose allegiances to Ælfhelm and to each other were somewhat stronger, Æthelred knew, than their fealty to him.

The men with lands in the south would urge him to look beyond the Narrow Sea to Normandy for a bride. Wed the duke’s sister, they would tell him, and persuade her brother to side with Æthelred against the Danes who pillaged English towns and abbeys. Æthelred suspected that it might take a great deal of persuading. The Vikings paid Duke Richard well to harbour their ships on his coast and to trade their spoils in his great market in Rouen. If Æthelred should marry one of the duke’s sisters – and if he sealed the alliance with enough gold – Richard might be willing to bar the Danes from his ports, and so stop the Viking rape of English coasts.

Then again, Æthelred knew, he might not.

The hubbub in the hall, which had been muffled while the men filled their bellies, rose again as the meal came to a close and the drinking began in earnest. Æthelred motioned to his cupbearer to refill his drinking horn, then eased himself back in his chair and glowered at the men around him from hooded eyes, focusing at last on Ælfhelm of Northumbria. The ealdorman had risen from his bench and stood now in earnest consultation with a knot of nobles and clergy. His face was as craggy as a weathered scarp and just as difficult to read. Æthelred had never been able to decipher the subtle workings of the mind behind that stonelike visage, but he would wager half of Wessex that tonight Ælfhelm was garnering support for his daughter’s marriage to the crown.

And he would find it, certainly. It was customary for England’s king to choose his bride from one of the noble families of the realm. Æthelred’s wife and his mother both had been daughters of northern lords. Their fathers, though, would have been more pliable than Lord Ælfhelm. It seemed to the king that Ælfhelm was not mortal, but carved from granite and stone. Æthelred neither liked nor trusted the man, although he was careful to hide this. And while the king understood that it was wise to bind his enemies close, it seemed to him that the marriage bed might be too close for comfort. Ælfhelm had sons as well as a daughter, sons who, like their father, hungered for the power that came with a royal marriage. That power, combined with the family’s wealth and northern allegiances, could be more trouble than any girl was worth.

As for the girl herself, the last time the king had seen Elgiva she had been all of thirteen summers old. She had looked far older though, her body full and womanly, her mouth as red and voluptuous as ripe fruit. She was a woman born for bedding, and had she been older he might have forgotten himself and obliged her. But her youth had stopped him. That and her obvious awareness of the power she had over men, which had chilled his ardour somewhat. Now, at sixteen, wealthy and beautiful, with powerful kin and with family lands that rivalled his own, if he did not marry her himself he should have to watch her carefully. Whatever man she did marry must have no pretensions to the throne, or Æthelred might find his very crown at risk.

The king took another long pull at his cup. As for the unmarried sisters of Richard of Normandy, there were two of them, and that was all he knew about them. He knew something of Richard, though – a pretentious upstart sprung from Danish raiders who had decimated the northern territories of the Frankish kingdom, and then settled there to breed horses and brats. Richard’s pedigree was nothing like Æthelred’s noble ancestry, and although Richard himself was a Christian and styled himself ‘duke’, he was little more than a Danish pirate. In his youth he had even gone a-viking, raiding the Irish coast for gold and slaves, and he had ever welcomed the dragon ships to his harbours. Even now, rumour had it, there were Danish longships, their holds filled with English plunder, sheltering along Normandy’s coast. So to wed one of Richard’s sisters and plant a babe in her belly might be wise. It might give the Norman duke a more personal interest in the security of England’s shores.

Æthelred frowned. To take a Norman bride would offend his northern lords and bind them more strongly to each other – and against him. To wed Ælfhelm’s daughter instead of the Norman girl would be to throw away perhaps his only opportunity to quell the Viking threat to his kingdom. There was peril whichever way he turned, north or south. Taking any wife at all would be a devil’s bargain, and if it were up to him, he would not do it. He was the king. He wanted no woman in his hall.

He drank again, deeply, from the gold-rimmed horn, but the sweet mead that should have sent fire racing through his blood did not warm him. Instead, a chill, cold as the mouth of a grave, snaked along his arms and grazed an icy finger up his spine. A heaviness oppressed him, an inescapable black dread, and he whispered a curse against the sending that he knew was come upon him and that he could not escape. His vision blurred to haze, the sounds of feasting stilled, and from every dark corner, shadows streamed towards him until they reached the dais and formed a pulsing darkness before him. From its murky heart, his dead brother’s face, eyes glowing and malignant, stared into his.

He tried to pray, to curse, but he could make no sound except the formless, silent howl that was the voice of nightmare. The drinking horn slipped from his hand, yet he did not hear it fall. He heard only a low keening, like the sound of the wind hurtling against white cliffs above a pounding sea. It grew until it filled his brain, and again he tried to cry out, clutching his head in his hands as other hands grasped him, and the black phantom before him rippled and then faded at last.

Alarmed voices rang in his ears, and someone held a cup to his mouth, urging him to drink, but he dashed the cup away and shook off the hands that would tend him. Desperate to distract them, he called for music and was rewarded by the strum of the harp and the chanting of his scop.

His men scattered back to their places, but as Æthelred cast a furtive glance around the room, the eyes that met his were guarded and troubled. What did they think they had seen? A king besotted and drowned in his cups? A man overcome with grief at the death of his wife?

Better that than a king haunted by his brother’s ghost.

Three times now the thing that had been his brother had appeared thus before him, staring with glistening eyes. He had seen it first a month ago, hovering like some monstrous bird above his mother as she lay dying. Three days later, when he followed the dowager queen’s body to its resting place at Wherwell Abbey, he had glimpsed Edward’s face glaring at him, a darker shade among the chapel shadows. And tonight it had come again to torment him. Was it to be his wyrd, his fate, to be visited for ever by his dead brother now that he alone remained alive of those who had seen Edward die?

What was it that drew the dead forth to walk among the living? And what would it take to send the thing back into its grave?

His thoughts flew to his dead wife, Ælfgifu, lying cold and still upon her bier. Tomorrow he would take her body by ship to its resting place at Minster Abbey. Would the spectre of his brother be waiting there for him, as it had waited at Wherwell? He shuddered at the thought of it. Tonight he would pray for redemption, beseech forgiveness and mercy from God for the death of his brother. He would even plead for the repose of his mother’s soul, although he had no doubt that she was tasting the torments of hell.

25th December 1001
Aldeborne Manor, Northamptonshire

Elgiva of Northampton – great-granddaughter of Wulfsige the Black, granddaughter of the Lady Wulfrun of Tamworth, and only daughter of Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria – stood at her chamber window and saw with satisfaction that a heavy snow was once more piling up against her father’s manor walls. The massive drifts would keep the men indoors for several days, and that suited her purpose exactly.

She sat down upon a stool and gestured to a servant to latch the wooden shutter against the cold. Pulling her thick woollen shawl closer about her, she tried to control her impatience as her old nurse stood behind her and used deft fingers to tame her mass of dark curls. She must look her best at tonight’s Yule feast. There were royal visitors awaiting her in the hall, and if events played out as she intended, she would soon be sharing her bed with the eldest son of the king. After that it would be a simple enough matter for her father to negotiate whatever details were necessary to arrange a royal marriage.

She picked up a silver mirror and contemplated the perfect arch of her dark brows, then angled the disk to reflect Groa’s aged face beneath her grey linen headrail. That face was as familiar to Elgiva as her own, yet there were secrets behind the shadowy grey eyes that she had never been able to fathom.

‘Tell me again,’ she said, ‘about the prophecy.’

Groa’s normally brooding expression lit up with a rare, knowing smile.

‘You are destined for queenship, my lady,’ she said. ‘Your children will be kings. You have but to reach out your hand and grasp what you desire.’

Elgiva pursed her lips, studying their fullness in the mirror.

‘I intend to,’ she said. ‘I intend to make Athelstan desire me tonight.’ She wanted him to hunger for her body in exactly the way the priests railed against in their sermons.

‘How can he not?’ Groa asked. ‘You are as beautiful as you are wealthy. Even the king desired you, and you were but a child then.’

Elgiva smiled, relishing the memory of her meeting with the king at Yuletide three years before. She had bribed a servant to help her escape from an evening of prayer in Lady Ælfgifu’s chamber, and in the dark passage outside she had unwittingly stumbled into the king. Æthelred had saved her from a fall by pulling her hard up against him, holding her there for far longer than necessary while he inquired if she was hurt. She had answered him with her most beguiling smile, had eagerly pressed her body against his as he held her close. Then, with a skill she could not help but admire, he had slipped a hand through the neckline of her cyrtel to fondle her breast. She had let him do it, of course, because he was the king, and because she had been too astonished to protest. Besides, she had liked it. Who would have guessed that a man so old could have such eloquent, liquid hands?

She had dared to hope that he would lead her to his chamber, but it was at that interesting moment that one of his attendants had come to drag him to some meeting or other, and so her brief little tryst with Æthelred had ended.

Angling the mirror a little lower she studied her full breasts and the necklace of thick gold that had been a gift from her brother Wulf. It had been Wulf who had told her father about her little interlude with the king. Her father, who had ever been one to strike first and ask questions later, had cuffed her so hard that her mouth and nose had bled. He would have hit her again had Groa not come between them, fingering the pagan amulet she wore at her throat and threatening him with a curse. That had stayed her father’s hand, for he was wary of Groa and her curses and potions. Still, her father had hurled filthy words at Elgiva, calling her a cunt and a whore, and he had sent her from court that very day. She still hated him for that, but she had learned a lesson. She was very careful now about what secrets she confided to her favourite brother.

‘I am glad,’ she said, ‘that I did not give my maidenhead to the king. It would have been a waste.’

‘As he already has a wife,’ Groa replied, her face in the mirror gone all grim again, ‘it would have done you little good, to be sure.’

Well, it might have got her more lands and more money if she had become the king’s leman, but she was already one of the wealthiest women in the realm, and one of the few who owned her estates outright. Still, it would not have made her queen, and that was what she truly wanted. Groa had said she would be the mother of kings, after all, so it must mean that she was meant to wed Athelstan, who would surely take the throne when his father died.

And for the next two weeks, Athelstan and two of his brothers would be under this roof for the Yule feast. It was perfect.

Even better, her father was not here, although he had nearly ruined everything by insisting that she go south with him to attend the king’s Yule. He would have had her spend Christmas Day on her knees mouthing prayers with the king’s wife and her ladies. She had gulled him out of that, though, and she smiled to herself as she remembered how her father’s brow had darkened when she casually said that she hoped to become much better acquainted with the king during her time at court. He had raised a threatening hand, and she had feared that he might strike her, but Groa had whisked her out of the chamber, scolding like mad, and that had saved her. After that nothing more had been said about taking her south, and with her father and elder brother now gone, she could do as she pleased. Wulf certainly would not stop her.

‘I think that Lord Athelstan has a look of the king about him,’ she observed. They had the same golden hair and square, pleasing face.

Groa snorted. ‘When I saw him in the yard this morning he had the look of a man who spends more time grooming his horse than he does himself.’

‘I did not ask for your opinion,’ Elgiva snapped. ‘And you are not being fair. Any man looks unkempt when he has been riding.’ Besides, there was an air about Athelstan, an unconscious swagger that she found infinitely appealing. At sixteen years old he was the heir to the throne of all England, and no one knew it better than he did.

She had watched from the hall steps as he rode through the gate, and he had lifted his eyes to hers and snared her in an unsettling blue gaze. She had seen it then, that awareness of just exactly who and what he was. He had worn it like a mantle, and from that instant she had wanted to wrap herself in it.

One day Athelstan would be the most powerful man in the realm, and her destiny, she was certain, must be bound to his. For two weeks he would be her guest – time enough, surely, to make him desire her, and to convince him that he must have her for his wife.

31st December 1001
Aldeborne Manor, Northamptonshire

It was the seventh night of Christmas feasting, and Athelstan stood with his brothers amid a throng of revellers near the central fire of the great hall at Aldeborne. The bad weather had finally broken, and it appeared that every estate holder in the hundred of Northampton had ventured out of doors to join Lord Wulfheah and his sister Elgiva at table. The timbered hall, its carved rafters garlanded with greens, was redolent with succulent aromas, and the haunches of roasting meat above the coals made his mouth water. The high table at the top of the hall had been laid, as it had been every night since he’d arrived, with a snowy cloth, silver plates, and fat candles. Tonight numerous extra tables had been set up in the hall as well, and the noise from the crush of guests was almost deafening.

As Athelstan turned to say something to his brothers, the hall quieted, and he saw that Elgiva and Wulf had appeared on the dais to begin the business of formally greeting their guests. They made a striking couple. They were both black-haired and handsome, although Elgiva’s petite figure and small features gave her an elfin grace that was missing from her brother’s taller, warrior’s frame. They were both clad in deep scarlet, and Elgiva’s shimmering gown clung to her in a way that was guaranteed to make every man in the room uncomfortable inside his breecs. Her hair was dressed in loose, wanton curls that framed her face and cascaded down her back, and when her voluptuous lips curved into a beguiling smile, a man would have to be made of stone not to smile back.

He ought to know. She had been favouring him with that smile – and somewhat more – from the moment he’d ridden through Aldeborne’s gate a week ago. On Christmas night she had welcomed him with the ale bowl that was traditional and a molten kiss that was anything but. It had surprised the hell out of him, but he had not been fool enough to take it seriously. Not at first. She had placed him by her side at the table, though, and the casual grazing of knee and shoulder and hand all through the long meal had nearly driven him mad with a desire that food would not satisfy. By then he had caught on to her little game, and although he’d been playing it for seven nights now, it had lost none of its allure. She aroused him still, and he would find relief again tonight with the pretty blonde he had plucked from the kitchens – a girl who expected no reward beyond a few silver coins.

And that was the difficulty with Elgiva, he thought, watching her as she made her way through the hall with the brimming ale cup. Bedding her would cost him far more than a little silver. If he got her with child – even without a Christian marriage or a handfasting – it would have political repercussions that would further shift the weight of power in England to the northern lords.

Elgiva’s brother Wulf had to know that. He was five years older than she was, and he had a place on the king’s council. Since he was making no effort to curb his sister’s little game, he must approve. Did her father know of it? Had he even put her up to it? The ealdorman was not here and so could claim innocence if any spark flared between Elgiva and one of the æthelings. The blame – and the king’s wrath – would all fall on him.

He had not taken his eyes from Elgiva, and his brother Ecbert leaned towards him and whispered, ‘The hell with it. Why don’t you just bed her and put yourself out of your misery?’

Athelstan threw him a dark look. ‘The lady comes with far too much baggage, and you know it,’ he muttered. ‘Do not let me drink more than a single cup of mead tonight, or I might lose my senses and take what she’s offering. Why don’t you bed her, Ecbert, if she is to your taste?’

Ecbert snorted. ‘She would not have me on a platter,’ he said, ‘more’s the pity.’

‘It is the eldest ætheling that she wants,’ Edmund said, ‘and do not flatter yourself that your good looks have anything to do with it.’

Edmund had the right of it. Athelstan was only too aware of the mantle of responsibility that he bore as the eldest son of the king. When he wed, and that would likely not happen while his father lived, it would be for political expediency, not personal inclination. To form any kind of attachment with a girl of noble birth would be to hand the girl and her family a weapon to use against the king. He could bed any girl in the kingdom, as long as she was not crown-worthy.

Elgiva, who at that moment stepped in front of him to offer him the ale cup, was forbidden fruit. Her dark eyes held his as he drank, but for once her face was grave, and she was careful not to touch his fingers with her own.

Was this another move in the game, or had she learned about his trysts with the kitchen wench? He hoped the girl would not be punished. He would have to make sure that she was well compensated, just in case.

Whatever was behind this sudden coolness, he must play his part. He returned Elgiva’s gaze with a grave bow and said, ‘Your beauty, lady, is a gift to us all.’

Elgiva, gazing into Athelstan’s guarded blue eyes, accepted his compliment with a curt nod. She knew he desired her. She could see it in his glance, could feel it in her fingertips whenever she chanced to touch him.

But he would rather bed a kitchen wench than the Lady of Northampton. Wulf had told her that, sneering that Athelstan obviously preferred a woman with experience in bed play. I can give you some of that, sweetheart, he had whispered, kissing her forehead and laughing when she stalked away from him.

Wulf stood beside her now, his hand at her waist, distracting her with a light caress. She slipped away from him, ignored Athelstan, and smiled at Ecbert, who she had determined would sit beside her at the feast tonight. Let the king’s eldest son gnaw on the knowledge that he was not the only ætheling in her hall.

At the table, the younger brother seemed gratified by her sudden favour, and he responded by regaling her with a series of ribald tales that he, at least, seemed to find enormously entertaining. He reminded her of nothing so much as a boisterous puppy, gaunt and clumsy, with none of the grace of his brothers. Even Edmund, the youngest of the three and built like a tree stump, had more to recommend him than the lanky Ecbert, who was all arms and legs and, she thought, very little brain. His horselike face and braying laugh added nothing to his charm. It was a pity that he was too young to grow a beard, for she judged that it would improve his looks considerably. There would be less of him to see.

Still, he seemed open enough and completely guileless. Perhaps she could get him to reveal something about Athelstan that would be the key to bewitching him.

She signalled to a serving girl to fill Ecbert’s cup, which he had already emptied three times, and she noticed that a servant had slipped behind the table to deliver a wax tablet each to Wulf and to Athelstan. She recognized her father’s seal on the tablet that Wulf opened, and the question she had been about to pose to Ecbert died unspoken on her lips. She turned to her brother instead.

‘What does my father say?’ she asked him. To have arrived tonight the messages must have been sent from Rochester at the very first moment that the weather allowed. Surely they contained news of some import.

Wulf did not answer her but glanced at Athelstan, who was reading his own missive.

‘It is heavy news,’ her brother said, his face grave. ‘I am sorry, my lord.’

Elgiva held her breath. It must be a death. Nothing else would make her brother look with such concern towards the ætheling. Was it the king? Dear God, if he were dead, then the witan would surely offer Athelstan the throne. The implications of that for her own future could be enormous. The new king would need a wife, and her father would make sure that Athelstan looked to Northampton for his bride. She might be a queen before Eastertide.

But Athelstan had set the tablet down in front of him, and now he rose and faced the throng in the hall. His expression was solemn, and his movement drew all eyes towards him. A hush fell over the revellers as they waited to hear what he would say.

‘I am bid by my father the king,’ he said, his voice echoing through the silent hall, ‘to announce that on Christmas morning my mother, the Lady Ælfgifu, died after giving birth to a son. The babe, alas, followed his mother in death. I ask that all present here tonight pray for both their souls.’ He turned to Elgiva and Wulf. ‘I would speak with my brothers alone. Please excuse us.’

Elgiva watched the three brothers make their way from the table. Their mother’s death was a sorrow to them, she supposed, but her passing was of little significance to anyone else. The king’s wife had borne him numerous children, but as his consort and not his queen, she had done little else. Her death would have no effect on the kingdom or on Elgiva’s world.

She turned to her brother, who was looking thoughtfully at the tablet in his hand.

‘What does my father say?’ she asked again. ‘I suppose that the king’s sons will leave for Rochester tomorrow.’ This news must put an end to the feasting, in any case.

‘They do not go south,’ Wulf replied. ‘There is no reason to do so, for their mother is already in her grave. My father writes that the æthelings are to take charge of our house troops and go to the king’s manor at Saltford. He will meet them there, but he does not say when. Not immediately, I think.’ He tapped a finger against the tablet, then he looked speculatively at Elgiva. ‘The king, it seems, will take another wife, and very soon. I am ordered to stay here with you, in case you are summoned to court. It appears, my dear sister, that my father entertains the hope that you will be Æthelred’s bride.’

Elgiva gaped at her brother, while her mind played with new possibilities. To be wed to the father and not the son was not the destiny that she had been anticipating. Would it suit her? Well, it would certainly put her in a position of power much sooner than she had looked for it. Yet it was not an honour that she was certain she would like, and it was not exactly the power that she had hoped for.

‘To what end would the king marry?’ she asked Wulf. ‘Æthelred is an old man with seven sons. What need has he of a bride who would give him yet more sons?’

‘He is not so old,’ her brother said. ‘And, as you have good reason to know, he enjoys his earthly pleasures. Better to marry than to burn, the Scriptures say.’

She frowned. She wanted to wed a king, and yet …

‘His first wife was never crowned queen,’ she protested. ‘What good to wed a king and not get a crown?’

Wulf’s hand snaked behind her as if he would caress her, but instead she felt his fingers grasp her neck in a painful, vice-like grip that she could neither escape nor shake off without making a scene.

‘Do you never think beyond your own petty concerns, my dear sister?’ he hissed into her ear. ‘Do not delude yourself into thinking that this alliance would be for your benefit. Its sole purpose would be to strengthen my father’s influence with the king, not cater to your monumental vanity. You will do whatever you are bid to do, wed whomever you are bid to wed, and let your father and brothers handle whatever details are to be negotiated.’

He let her go, and she rubbed her neck surreptitiously, smiling up at him for the benefit of anyone in the hall who may have noticed their little interaction.

‘May I ask, then, if my father is negotiating my betrothal? Am I to be allowed to make preparations for my nuptials?’ She would need new gowns, jewels, more attendants, and her own furnishings for the lady’s chambers at the Winchester palace. How much time did she have?

‘It is somewhat more complicated than that,’ Wulf replied.

She did not like the sound of that.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You are not the only maid that the king is considering.’

Now he leered at her, and she realized that he was toying with her, forcing her to tease the news out of him bit by bit, revelling in the power he held over her.

‘You are lying,’ she said, refusing to be baited any more. ‘There can be no one else, for I am the obvious choice.’ And now that she had grown somewhat used to the idea, the prospect of wedding Æthelred, the king with the liquid hands, was suddenly extremely appealing.

‘Are you so confident, my dear?’ Wulf asked, his dark eyes dancing with amusement. ‘I would not be so, if I were you. My father does not provide any names, but he states quite clearly that other possible brides exist. Their advantages are even now under consideration by the king.’ He leaned towards her to whisper in her ear. ‘If you had gone to Rochester you might have been able to use your many charms to sway Æthelred in your favour. But, alas, you stayed here. Poor Elgiva. It looks as though you should have accompanied our father to the Christmas court after all.’ He nipped her ear and then got to his feet. Moments later he had joined a group of guests below the dais.

Elgiva, following him with her eyes, still wondered if he had told her the truth. If he had, and if the king chose to look elsewhere for a bride, then her decision to remain here for the Yule feast was, quite possibly, the worst mistake she had ever made in her life.

January 1002
Fécamp, Normandy

The cold, hard frosts of early January clung tightly to the lands that bordered the Narrow Sea, and for many days after the turn of the year, the tall masts of the Danish longships bristled in Fécamp’s harbour. When the ships set sail at last, following the whale road back to their homeland, folk in the town breathed a collective sigh of relief, and in the ducal palace life settled into its winter routine.

The women of the duke’s household spent their daylight hours together in the chamber of Richard’s young wife, Judith, attending to their needlework. The lighter-weight summer tunics, mantles, fine linen shifts, even chausses and braies that belonged to members of the ducal family, had been drawn from their coffers, inspected carefully for rents and tears, and sorted into piles for repair.

Emma, who had some skill with the harp, played softly for the women who were seated in a companionable circle around the brazier. As she plucked the strings her glance drifted to where Mathilde had taken advantage of a shaft of daylight filtering through the high, horn-covered window. She had recovered from the ague that had troubled her over the last weeks, and now her face, although still thin, had regained some colour and vibrancy. She was bent over an embroidery frame, where she worked a grail in pure gold thread upon a cope of white silk. It was to be a gift for their brother, Archbishop Robert, and Mathilde’s lips curved with satisfaction as the beautiful thing came to life beneath her fingers.

Judith, pacing the chamber with her six-week-old son on her shoulder, paused to inspect Mathilde’s handiwork.

‘It is a magnificent and generous gift, Mathilde,’ she pronounced in a tone of grudging approval. ‘I hope that when it is completed you will turn your skill towards something more practical. You will require some fine new gowns, I think, when we return to Rouen.’

Emma, watching her sister, saw her mouth purse. They both found it irksome to be ordered about by their brother’s wife, however well-intentioned her directives might be. Twenty years old, with nut-brown hair and a pleasingly rounded figure, Judith of Brittany’s benign appearance belied her strident personality. She had shouldered the role of duchess of Normandy with a vigour that irritated even the Dowager Duchess Gunnora. Months of internecine skirmishes between the duke’s wife and his mother had threatened to turn into all-out war, until finally the two women had managed to forge a workable truce. Gunnora continued to advise her son on matters of state, and Judith ruled his household. Emma and her sister had found the terms of the unspoken treaty not especially to their liking, but they had not been consulted.

‘Are the gowns that I already own not fine enough for my attendance at your court in Rouen, my lady?’ Mathilde’s voice rang high and sharp, with an unmistakably brittle edge that made Emma wince.

‘It was not meant to be a criticism, Mathilde,’ Judith snapped, shifting her child from one shoulder to the other, ‘but it is time to think about preparing for your betrothal and marriage. Now that Richard has a son I am certain that he will wish to provide for you and for Emma in the same way that he did for your elder sisters. You, Mathilde, will surely be the next to wed, and it may be sooner than you think.’

Startled by Judith’s remark, Emma struck a false note, then set the harp aside. Her mind fastened on Judith’s words, and now she recalled the conversation she’d overheard between her brother and Swein Forkbeard. Had Richard, after all, promised his sister to the son of the Danish king? Or had that conversation with Forkbeard merely spurred Richard to bend his thoughts towards his youngest sisters’ marriage prospects?

‘Is my brother contemplating an alliance for my sister?’ she asked, keeping her tone light. ‘Pray, Judith, if you know something, do not keep us in suspense.’

‘Your brother,’ Judith said, ‘has Mathilde’s welfare, and yours, Emma, always at heart. Whatever provisions he makes for you will be explained to you at the appropriate time. I only bring this up now because, as you are both of an age to marry, you must comport yourselves differently than you have in the past. In particular, you, Emma, will not, under any circumstances, accompany Richard on his progress this summer. Best you put it out of your mind completely.’

Emma stared at Judith in shock. ‘But I have always made that journey!’ she protested. From the time she was a little girl and, even she had to admit it, her father’s spoiled pet, she had been allowed to accompany the duke and her brothers on the summer progress to the ducal forts, abbeys, and manors that lay scattered across Normandy. Emma had been the only one of the sisters to make the annual trek, and she had revelled in the relative freedom of those excursions. It was true that she was accompanied by a small phalanx of personal attendants, who never left her side, but the rhythm of that itinerant existence provided a welcome contrast to the sequestered life inside the castle walls.

‘You are a child no longer,’ Judith said. ‘I have advised Richard that your place must be here, with the women of the court, and he has agreed. We will speak of it no more.’

Emma bit her lip. Beside her, Margot, the healer and midwife who had assisted Emma into the world and who had accompanied her on those summer-long journeys, patted her hand in commiseration. Heavyhearted with disappointment, Emma began to sort through a pile of her gowns, searching for signs of wear. She would appeal to her mother about this, although she suspected it would do her little good.

Judith, meanwhile, had handed her babe to a wet nurse and seated herself among the women again. They worked in less than amiable silence for some time, until it was broken by the sound of commotion from the castle yard below. Clearly some visitor of importance had approached the gate and was requesting audience with the duke. The calls of the gatekeeper and the door warden were too muffled, though, for anyone in the chamber to make out what was said.

Judith gave a quick nod to Dari, an Irish slave who had accompanied her from Brittany. Tiny, soft-footed, and clever, Dari made an excellent little spy. She brought the ladies word of activities occurring in the duke’s hall long before any messages were conveyed along more formal lines. Judith rewarded Dari with ribbons, trinkets, and even silver pennies, depending on the import of the information that she carried, saying that it was well worth it in order to receive news almost as soon as it was heard in the kitchens.

Emma, still brooding over the loss of her summer’s adventure, took up a cyrtel of her own and, inspecting it, found a rip at the hem. It was one of the gowns she wore when riding, very full and loose. She placed it on the pile to be mended, then looked up to see that Dari had returned, wild with excitement.

‘The messenger is English, my lady,’ Dari said breathlessly. ‘A company of men from across the Narrow Sea has landed at the harbour and will be with us soon. There is an archbishop among them, and an ealdorman. What is an ealdorman?’ She spoke the unfamiliar word with a wrinkled nose.

‘It is an English title of some kind,’ Judith said. ‘Something like a duke, I believe, only not as powerful as Richard. An archbishop, though …’

There was no need for her to complete the sentence. All the women understood the importance of an archbishop, who represented both temporal and spiritual power. Appointed to their sees by the reigning monarch of the land, they controlled enormous wealth, administered large estates, and maintained a retinue of fighting men. Emma’s brother Robert, archbishop of Rouen, was second only to his brother, the duke, in terms of prestige and power. The arrival of an English archbishop in Normandy meant that some matter of great import was at hand.

‘Go down to the kitchens, girl,’ Judith said to Dari, ‘and learn whatever you can. Hurry now!’

Dari slipped away, and the women returned to their work, although Emma guessed that each of them was as distracted by the arrival of the English as she was.

‘Will he be offering a treaty, do you think?’ she asked. The presence of an archbishop seemed to imply that. In her father’s time the pope himself had brokered a treaty between England and Normandy regarding the trading of stolen English goods in Norman ports. She had been too young to pay close attention to the talk that swirled around the hall, about the wisdom of bowing to the pressure exerted by the pope, and by England’s king. She could remember, though, heated discussions between her mother and her two brothers when the issue of the treaty had been raised again a few years ago.

Archbishop Robert had insisted that Richard, as the new duke, need no longer abide by their father’s treaty with England. It infuriated Robert that King Æthelred, reportedly the wealthiest monarch in all of Christendom, would demand that the duke of Normandy forego his quite lucrative trade with the Danes or the Norse or anyone else. He had convinced Richard of the wisdom of this point of view, and since then Richard’s coffers had grown heavy with silver from a brisk trade in slaves and booty looted from England.

‘I expect,’ said Judith dismissively, ‘that it will be some matter of trade or policy that your brother and the dowager duchess will settle. We will learn about it in good time, but I will wager that it has nothing to do with us.’

Judith’s lips stretched into a thin line, suggesting to Emma that Richard’s wife was not yet at peace with the fact that she sat here sewing while Richard’s mother sat at his right hand in the great hall. The politics of marriage, Emma thought, appeared to be every bit as complicated as the politics of kings.

January 1002
Near Saltford, Oxfordshire

Athelstan, Ecbert, and Edmund rode at the head of a small company of men along a track that wound through a snow-smothered landscape. Above them thin white clouds driven by a light breeze streaked the sky. For two weeks the æthelings had been awaiting the arrival of Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria, at the royal estate near Saltford, the men restive and chafing under the enforced inactivity brought on by repeated bouts of foul weather. In that time the æthelings had received no further word from either the ealdorman or the king, and Athelstan felt as if they had been abandoned, awaiting word of their father’s pleasure. He wondered what was in the king’s mind to keep his eldest sons distant at such a time.

It had not concerned him that news of their mother’s death had reached them only after she had been laid to rest, for he understood that the deadly Christmastime storm had made it impossible for a messenger to make it through any sooner. He and his brothers had mourned her in their own way, yet her loss had touched them almost not at all. Although she had borne eleven children she had tended none of them in their infancy or their youth. Her impact upon her sons and daughters had been of no greater weight than that made by a single snowflake when it touches the earth. She had been but a shadow in their lives, almost invisible in the far larger shadow cast by their father, the king.

Now, though, Athelstan found it worrisome that Ealdorman Ælfhelm and the other great lords of the land remained with the king in Winchester while the eldest æthelings had not been summoned. What matters of moment were being discussed among the king’s counsellors?

What secrets was their father keeping from his sons?

‘He will marry again,’ Edmund had said flatly, when they had discussed it among themselves.

Ecbert had guffawed in disbelief, but Athelstan was inclined to agree with Edmund. Their father was not a young man, but he was vigorous and hale, and his carnal appetites were an open secret among the nobles of his court. The bishops, certainly, would urge him to marry.

Such a step could have momentous consequences for the æthelings, and the fact that Athelstan and his brothers were not privy to their father’s deliberations gnawed like a canker. Even as he turned his face up to the pale light of the winter sun, Athelstan’s thoughts were as cold as the wind that blew at their backs.

He urged his horse up a gentle rise, towards an ancient stone that stood black against the sky. It marked the final leg of this morning’s quest, a journey that had been suggested by Ecbert, half in seriousness and half in jest. He had heard tell of a crone living alone in a fold of the hills, a wisewoman who could read events far in the future.

‘We should seek her out,’ he had urged last night, as he faced Edmund across the tafl board, deliberating his next move. ‘She might tell us something to our advantage.’

Athelstan and Edmund had both scoffed at their brother’s suggestion, but Ecbert had persisted.

‘The local folk swear that she has the Sight,’ he insisted. ‘Even the prior from the abbey hereabouts has been known to visit her cottage.’

‘Probably to persuade her to leave her pagan ways,’ Athelstan said drily, from where he sat watching their play.

‘They say that she knows things,’ Ecbert persisted, ‘that she can decipher men’s hearts.’

‘You might want to ask her for advice on how to win at tafl,’ Edmund said, making a move that captured Ecbert’s king and ended the game. ‘That is your third loss, man. You are utterly hopeless tonight.’

The normally genial Ecbert threw up his hands in frustration.

‘I am bored, Edmund! I am fed up with waiting here like a kennelled dog. If the weather is fine tomorrow, I shall ride out to consult the old woman. Athelstan, will you come with me? Who knows? She may be able to tell us what is in the mind of the king.’

Athelstan thought that unlikely. Nevertheless, the journey, at least, might not be such a bad idea. He glanced around the hall, where men clustered in small groups over games of dice or nodded over cups of ale. They were all of them bored and not a few of them surly. They would be at each other’s throats soon if he did not find something to occupy them.

He nodded briskly to Ecbert.

‘It can do no harm,’ he said, ‘and the men and horses will benefit from the exercise, fair weather or no.’

And so they had set out mid-morning, following landmarks that a local man pointed out as he led the way – a tree blasted by lightning, an abandoned mill, an ancient mound that the folk thereabouts called the Devil’s Barrow. They had arrived at last at a long, low ridge where the snow lay less thick than it did on the surrounding countryside, and where the standing stone, its edges scored in primitive runes, pointed skyward.

Athelstan checked his horse beside the ancient, lichen-covered stone. Gazing into the shallow vale beyond, he caught his breath at what he saw: a circle of what he guessed must be a hundred standing stones, each one the height of a man or a little more, mushroomed from the valley floor. Like monstrous, deformed fingers, black against the blanket of snow, the stones cast long shadows that speared, ominously, straight at him.

They might not be as massive as the giants on Sarum’s plain, he thought, but there were far more of them, and they had the same menacing power. He did not like it, and he felt his gut begin to churn.

Ecbert and Edmund came up beside him, and he watched their faces as they surveyed the scene before them. From their stricken expressions it was clear that they were having second thoughts about this venture – as was he. There were enough dark things in this world. One needn’t seek them out.

‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked Ecbert.

‘No,’ Ecbert muttered, ‘but it would be stupid to turn back now.’ He flicked a glance at Athelstan. ‘You go first, though.’

Athelstan scowled at him, then peered into the valley again, looking for signs of life. The stone circle was fringed by moss-bearded oaks, and on its far side he could see a small croft sheltering among the trees, its thatching frosted with snow. He realized with a shock that what he had taken for another stone, standing in the gloom near the hut, was a living figure staring back at him.

She had been waiting for them, then. He was certain of it, although he could not say how he knew. There was something else he was certain of as well, and it added to his anxiety. He was meant to go down there. Ecbert was right. There was no turning back now.

He led the way down into the grove, threading his horse through the trees towards the croft, purposely avoiding the clearing and its hulking, glowering stones. As they neared the cottage he saw that the figure waiting there was swathed in layers of coarse, black wool, her head covered by the folds of a shawl so thick that the old woman’s face, if it was a woman, was all but invisible.

‘God be with you, my lord,’ she called.

The voice was surprisingly deep and harsh – roughened, Athelstan guessed, by wood smoke and disuse. He dismounted and went towards her, Ecbert and Edmund trailing behind him.

‘God be with you, mother,’ he said. ‘It must be hard faring for you this winter, living so far from your neighbours as you do. Will you accept a small gift, some supplies to replenish your larder against lean times?’ He gestured to one of his men, who placed a large sack filled with cheese, bread, and pulses beside the hut and then hastened back to his mount.

The eyes watching Athelstan showed neither surprise nor gratitude.

‘What would you have of me?’ she asked. ‘You have come far from your appointed road, for you are bound north, I think. The herepath lies that way.’

She gestured to the west, where the old road built by the Roman legions, the Fosse Way, ran from Exeter in the southwest to Jorvik in the north. Presumably, whenever Ealdorman Ælfhelm arrived to lead them to Northumbria, they would, indeed, follow that same northward road.

Still, Athelstan reassured himself, it did not take second sight to hazard that a group of armed men wearing the badge of the ealdorman of Northumbria would likely be headed that way.

‘Perhaps you have already given me what I seek,’ he said, ‘if you can predict nothing more for me than a road that leads north. But it is my brother here,’ he motioned to Ecbert, ‘who wishes to consult you.’

She peered up at him then, and he saw the gleam of shrewd eyes from within the folds of her shawl.

‘Nay, lord,’ she said, shaking her head slowly. ‘You are the one who has need of guidance. Will you give me your hand?’

He hesitated, brushed by a whisper of foreboding. The knowing eyes fixed on his, though, flashed a challenge that he could not ignore, and he placed his hand within her outstretched palms. Her fingers felt thin and clawlike, as roughened and calloused as his own.

She peered at his palm, and for some time she was silent while Athelstan’s disquiet grew. The standing stone on the ridge, the menacing stone circle, the skeletal touch of the old woman’s hands – all of it was forbidden, pagan magic. He felt a wild urge to flee, but in the next moment she spoke, and in a voice far different from the one with which she had greeted him. Now it was vibrant, full and feminine. The timbre of it pulsed through him in the same way that a tolling bell vibrates through the blood.

‘There is great strength in this hand,’ she proclaimed, loud enough for all his men to hear, ‘strength enough to wield even the great Sword of Offa.’

Next to him he felt Edmund give a sudden start of surprise, and he could guess what his brother was thinking, for the words struck him, too, with a force as sharp as a blow. Offa’s Sword, once wielded by that legendary Saxon king, even now hung on the wall behind their father’s chair in the great hall at Winchester. By tradition it was bestowed by the ruling king upon his designated heir. It had not yet been promised to Athelstan, but he expected that one day it would be his.

Yet how had this woman guessed that she spoke to the eldest son of the king? Had word reached her somehow that the æthelings were at Saltford? Possibly. Possibly this was all an act, but if so, to what end?

Now the woman curled his fingers into his palm and leaned close to him.

‘Sword you may wield,’ she said, so softly that only he could hear her, ‘yet the sceptre will remain beyond your reach.’

It took him a moment to grasp the import of her words, and by then she was already turning away to enter her croft. Quickly he covered the space between them, caught her arm, and held her.

‘Who will take the sceptre, then, when the time comes?’ he hissed softly. ‘Who will wear the crown?’

She turned, and for a long moment she looked past him, at each of his brothers in turn, until at last she faced Athelstan again and slowly shook her head.

‘There is a shadow on the crown, my lord,’ she murmured, ‘and my Sight cannot pierce the darkness. You must be content with the knowledge you have been given, for I can say no more.’

No, of course she would say no more, he thought. She was wily, this one, toying with her supplicants as skilfully as a practised harlot so that they sought her out again and again. Yet she could have no real power, not unless one granted it to her. And he would not journey down that dark road.

He released her with a curt nod.

‘Go with God then, mother.’

She turned away from him, and he followed her with his eyes until the dark maw of her croft swallowed her.

Ecbert had already mounted his horse, but Edmund was waiting for him, studying him with dark, speculative eyes.

‘What did she say to you, there at the end?’ he asked. ‘What did she say about us?’

‘Nothing of import,’ Athelstan replied gruffly. ‘You did not really expect anything, did you? She is nothing but a fraud, Edmund.’

He mounted his horse and made for the ridge top, but in spite of what he had said to his brother, his thoughts ran on the old woman’s words. Her prediction about Offa’s Sword was no more than he already knew. He had been born the eldest son of one of the richest kings in Christendom, and Offa’s Sword was his due.

As for the rest of it, if there was any truth in the future that she bespoke him – that he would never be England’s king – then he must find a way to change his destiny.

February 1002
Fécamp, Normandy

The purpose of the English delegation to Normandy became clear as soon as the news spread of the recent death of the consort of the English king. Although Duke Richard maintained a stony silence about what had occurred during that first meeting in the great hall, everyone assumed that the archbishop and the ealdorman had brought a proposal of marriage for Mathilde, and that it would be accepted. A liaison with the English throne would raise Richard’s prestige in all of Christendom. He would be a fool to turn it down, and Richard was no fool.

Nevertheless, the negotiations dragged on for weeks, wreathed in secrecy behind the cloistered walls of nearby Trinity Abbey. Gunnora, who attended each session, returned every night to the palace so grim-faced that neither her daughters nor even the intrepid Judith dared to question her.

When eventually Ealdorman Ælfric was seen to board his ship and set sail with a document that bore the ducal seal, the palace hummed with excitement and anticipation. Emma waited with her sister for word that Mathilde must attend her mother and brothers to be counselled regarding King Æthelred and the role that Mathilde would play, but no summons came. Instead, the web of secrecy that had been cast about the proceedings between the Norman duke and the ministers of the English king remained impenetrable. The dowager duchess went into seclusion at Fécamp’s Priory of St Ann, while Richard and Robert left Fécamp altogether, riding with the English archbishop to the abbey of Saint-Wandrille to pray for the success of their endeavour.

Judith, who had no more inkling than anyone else about what had taken place in the abbey cloisters, nevertheless followed through with her plan to order new wardrobes for both of Richard’s sisters in preparation for their future nuptials. Fabrics of the finest silk, linen, and wool arrived daily from Rouen. Gowns, chemises, stockings, and headrails spilled from busy fingers until every chamber at Fécamp became a storehouse of wedding finery.

Mathilde, who should have been at the centre of all of the preparations, had taken ill again, laid low by headaches that would not let her sleep. Emma spent long hours at her sister’s bedside relaying every scrap of rumour and gossip that she gleaned about the English king and his court, although her own heart was heavy at the coming separation. Mathilde, she guessed, must feel it even more, for she would leave everything familiar behind her. Worse yet, beyond that parting lay the reality of the king, so many years older than his new bride, and in addition to that, the challenges of an English court filled with strangers speaking a foreign tongue.

Much would be expected of the king’s new wife, Emma thought, burdens that she could only begin to imagine. How would Mathilde, who had never been physically strong, cope with the pressures of that new life? Often Emma lay awake in the cold watches of the night thinking about those burdens, her heart filled with dread for her sister, knowing that beside her Mathilde, too, lay awake in the dark. Yet each sister kept her own counsel.

And so the weeks passed until, late one February afternoon, the dowager duchess returned from St Ann’s, and Emma was summoned to wait upon her. She found her mother alone in her chamber, circlet and headrail cast aside and the long grey braid of her hair coiled atop her head. She was warming her hands at the brazier, and the light from below accentuated fine creases around her mouth and eyes. She nodded to Emma, then turned her gaze back to the glowing coals, and for a time was silent. Emma saw an unfamiliar weariness in her face, and a resemblance to Mathilde that she had never before noticed in the sharpness of her nose and the thin line of her mouth.

Finally her mother spoke, almost as if to herself. ‘Events have overtaken us, and I cannot wait for your brothers’ return to set things in motion.’ She glanced at Emma and nodded towards a nearby stool. ‘You had best sit down, Emma, for I have a great deal to say to you.’

Emma’s heart clouded with dread. She sat upon the stool and waited for whatever hammer-stroke was to come.

‘As you have no doubt guessed,’ Gunnora said, ‘the king of England has sued for your sister’s hand in marriage.’ She glanced at Emma, then began to pace the room. ‘King Æthelred wants something in return, of course – something more than a nubile young bride to grace his bed. And so, in recompense for the great honour that he bestows upon us in taking a Norman wife, he will expect your brother to close his harbours to the Danes. His emissaries have not said as much directly. They have danced around the issue like virgins round a maypole, but it is clear what they want, and your brother has given them every reason to believe that he will grant it.’

Emma leaned forward in her chair, her eyes on her mother, her mind racing. She had been so preoccupied with the challenges that this marriage presented for her sister that she had forgotten the peril that her brother risked by agreeing to it. Æthelred of England was the mortal enemy of King Swein of Denmark. With Mathilde’s marriage to Æthelred, Richard, too, became an enemy of the infamous Swein Forkbeard, making Normandy a target for Danish raiders.

‘In fact,’ Gunnora went on, ‘your brother cannot deny the Danes access to our harbours and our markets. If he should do so, Swein Forkbeard would turn his shipmen upon us like starving dogs on a wounded stag. He would harry our coasts for plunder, and then barter it quite happily in Hamburg or Bremen. The English king could not come to our aid, for he has no fleet. The French king would merely rejoice in our misfortune. It would be a catastrophe for every Norman settlement that lies within reach of Danish longships. And so,’ she stopped her pacing and stood before Emma, ‘it will not happen. Your brother will never close his harbours to the Danes. Nevertheless, he will agree to do so, and his sister will be given in marriage as his bond.’

Emma stared at her mother as the wretchedness of her sister’s fate struck her. Mathilde would be little more than a royal hostage, sent to guarantee her brother’s submission to the will of the English king. And if Richard broke his pledge and defied the king, Mathilde would be defenceless in a foreign land, with no means of protecting herself from whatever retribution her royal husband might choose to inflict.

‘He cannot do it,’ Emma whispered, her mouth gone dry with horror. Her brother could not sacrifice Mathilde this way, could not place her at the mercy of the English king.

‘So I told your brother,’ Gunnora said, and now Emma could hear the weariness in her voice. ‘But Richard is a ruler and a man, and the life of a young girl, even that of his own sister, weighs little when balanced against the fate of an entire people. I could not sway him from his course.’

Emma felt sick at the thought of Mathilde alone in a foreign land, perhaps a prisoner of the king.

‘What will happen to her?’

Gunnora began to pace the room again, her hands twisting one inside the other, and Emma grew more and more frightened by her mother’s obvious distress. When Gunnora spoke at last, she did not answer Emma’s question.

‘Richard is not oblivious to the peril that his sister would face in England. It took little effort on my part to persuade him that we must provide her with a weapon that she could use to protect herself should her husband turn against her. The solution was obvious, but we agonized for hours over how it was to be accomplished. In the end, we offered Æthelred my dower lands on the Contentin. It is a princely gift that he could not easily refuse, for it gives him a toehold on this side of the Narrow Sea.’ She stopped her pacing and drew in a long breath. ‘In return, Richard demanded that his sister go to England not as Æthelred’s consort but as his queen.’

She looked at Emma with a kind of triumph in her eyes. ‘Emma, Ealdorman Ælfric has returned with word that the English king has accepted the contract. Æthelred’s Norman bride will not be a mere consort but will be crowned as his queen. She will have wealth and stature far beyond that of his first wife. She will stand at the king’s side accorded privileges that he cannot easily rescind however much he may be provoked.’

Emma saw at once the wisdom of such a provision, but she also recognized the additional burden that a crown would place upon her sister.

‘Does Mathilde know?’ she asked.

A shadow crept across Gunnora’s face, and Emma watched, bewildered, as her mother stepped forward and knelt in front of her. Slender fingers clutched Emma’s own, fingers so cold that they seemed to burn against Emma’s skin.

‘It is not Mathilde who will go to England, Emma,’ her mother said. ‘It must be you.’

The words flowed over her like water at first, and then they seemed to form into waves that buffeted her until she could no longer pull in even the smallest breath. She did not dare look away from her mother’s solid gaze, because it was the only thing that kept her from drowning in that treacherous sea.

She felt as if the world she knew had suddenly changed from a place of safety and sanctuary to something unknown and terrifying. She did not want to go to England, did not want to wed a king, did not want to bear the weight of a crown. Yet, gazing down into her mother’s stern and unrelenting face, she knew that she would be given no choice.

She slipped from her stool as panic engulfed her. Dropping to her hands and knees she began to retch, burning bile scalding her throat. A basin appeared before her, and her mother’s steady-ing hand grasped the back of her neck. She closed her eyes, but she could not stop the spinning panic that had her in its grip.

‘It is the shock of it,’ her mother said, her voice gentle but firm. ‘You were not prepared for it. But you will receive much worse than this in the years to come, my daughter,’ and now the voice seemed to Emma implacable and uncompromising. ‘You must ever be prepared within yourself to face what trials may await you. Let this be your first lesson: no one else must see you like this, Emma. Do you hear me? However great the provocation, you must never allow anyone to see your fear.’

Emma, crouched upon the floor, her body braced upon her forearms, her stomach churning, squeezed her eyes tight against the tears that threatened.

‘Why must I be the one to go?’ she demanded. ‘Mathilde is the eldest. She wants it. It is her right.’

‘Your sister has neither the strength nor the will to pit herself against the …’ Gunnora stopped, as if she regretted her words and would take them back, ‘… against the trials that face a queen,’ she finished slowly. ‘Only you, Emma, of all my daughters, have the gifts for that.’

Many hours later, as Emma lay sleepless at her mother’s side, Gunnora’s words echoed endlessly in her mind. She had no illusions about the fate that awaited her. That much her mother had made perfectly clear. As Norman bride and English queen she would walk a fine line between the interests of two rulers – her brother and her lord. Both men would demand her fealty. One, at least, would exact a heavy price if she were to prove disloyal. That was what her mother feared, and what she had been willing to reveal.

But there was something else that her mother would not say, and Emma felt certain that it had to do with the English king. She sensed that Gunnora knew something about Æthelred of England that she did not want Emma to know, at least not yet. It was that unshared knowledge about the man she would wed that frightened her most of all.

In the streets of Fécamp and Rouen, in Caen and Évreux, the populace hailed Emma as the flower of Normandy, the bride who would become England’s queen. Within the ducal palace, though, where the duke’s sisters once shared a bedchamber, the news of Emma’s betrothal was no cause for rejoicing. Mathilde, bitter and angry that a royal marriage had been contracted for Emma instead of for her, took to her bed, refusing to speak to her sister in spite of Emma’s tearful entreaties and Gunnora’s measured reproofs. Finally, Gunnora sent her to Rouen, where Mathilde would not be daily bombarded by the frenzied preparations for her sister’s marriage.

Emma wept at Mathilde’s departure, but Gunnora did not let her grieve for long. There was much that Emma had to learn before the ships would carry her across the Narrow Sea.

She spent long hours with the ealdorman, Ælfric, who schooled her in the finer points of the English language and the traditions of the court. He was an able tutor who treated her with grave courtesy, and she came to like him well. Not a young man by any means, his genial face was framed by thick grey locks that hung to near his shoulders. His beard, too, was grey, and his dark eyes gleamed beneath bushy grey brows. The fist-sized golden brooch that clasped his cloak at one shoulder and the jewelled rings adorning his fingers bespoke wealth and influence, and she wondered how close he was to the king.

Ælfric told her of the ancient kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, and Wessex, and of the great King Alfred, who began the task of binding the separate kingdoms into one – a task completed at last by King Edgar, Æthelred’s father. That king, he told her, had died at an early age, leaving his throne to a young son. Ælfric’s face had darkened then, as if some memory from that distant past had suddenly cast a shadow over the present. He would not say what troubled him, though, and Emma’s suspicion grew that there was something about her betrothed husband that was being kept from her.

During this time she received guidance from her family as well. Richard advised her regarding the estates for which she would be responsible, reminding her to pay close attention to income and expenditures, to rents and to yields.

Archbishop Robert counselled her regarding God’s expectations of her as queen, particularly her duties to the Church and the men and women who served it.

Judith helped her choose the attendants who would accompany her to England and assisted with the packing of all her belongings: clothes, furniture, bedding, supplies for the journey, gifts for the family and for the nobles who awaited her. It was no insignificant task. It would take three longships to transport Emma, her retainers, and her goods to Canterbury. Two more ships would carry a dozen horses bred in the Norman stables – Emma’s own gifts to the members of her new family.

It was Gunnora who, summoning her daughter to her chamber, raised the matter of the marriage bed and of Emma’s role as bedmate of a king.

‘It is your duty to be submissive to your lord, Emma,’ she said in clipped tones, as she sat facing her daughter. ‘It would be perilous for you to refuse the king your favours or to rebuke him, for your crown will be little more than an ornament at first.’

Gunnora’s expression softened then, and she cupped Emma’s cheek with her hand.

‘You are very young, my girl. That is your weakness as well as your strength. The king will cherish you for your youth and your beauty, and you must use both to gain his favour.’ She drew a deep breath and placed her hands on Emma’s shoulders. ‘Never forget that your first and most important task is to bear a son. It is your son who will be your treasure and your protector, even while he is yet a babe. It is your son who will give you power, who will bind the king to you in a way that he can be bound to no other living woman.’

In the brief moments that she was alone, Emma pondered her mother’s words. Would her child, she wondered, really be of much importance to a king who already had numerous sons and daughters? Could Æthelred of England ever be bound to her as he had been to that first wife?

It was a question she did not ask aloud, for even her mother could not know the answer.

On the night before she was to leave for England, there was no great feast held in Emma’s honour, for it was Lent and feasting was forbidden. The ducal household, though, gathered in the great hall at Fécamp, where the betrothal gifts sent by the English king had been spread out over six long tables. Among the treasures there were caskets filled with gold and silver; bolts of silk, linen, and the finest wool; silver bridles and saddles of tooled leather; fur pelts of martin, ermine, and sable; cunningly carved wooden boxes that held delicate musical pipes; necklaces studded with amethysts and emeralds; and an assortment of books magnificently bound in gold. When the gifts had been admired, Richard’s bard recited a poem about a flower that was borne on the tide from Normandy to England, where it bloomed and prospered and was loved by all.

Emma listened to the poem with dry eyes and a mild expression, for that was what was demanded of her. In her heart, though, she carried a weight of grief, uncertainty, and fear that filled her with dread and seemed to press upon her very soul.

A.D. 1002 Then, in the same Lent, came the Lady Emma, Richard’s daughter, to this land.

– The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

April 1002
Canterbury, Kent

The voyage from Fécamp to Canterbury took five days, and every one of them was cold, wet, and miserable. The heaving of the ship and the unremitting stench of fish oil that the shipmen used to waterproof their clothes and rigging sickened Emma and her companions. It was a relief when they left the open sea and finally entered the placid waters of the River Stour. As they sailed past the wattle huts and wooden enclosures marking the outskirts of Canterbury, Emma stood at the entrance of the shelter that had been rigged midship. She gazed through a steady rain at a flat, sodden, dreary landscape. In the distance, cathedral towers seemed to pierce the forbidding clouds that hung low and grey over the city.

Beside her Lady Wymarc was muffled in the folds of a woollen cloak, and as a blast of rain hit them, she pulled Emma’s fur-lined hood up to keep the rain off her hair.

‘Do you suppose,’ Emma murmured, her heart as grey and heavy as the swollen clouds, ‘that the sun ever shines in this dismal place?’

‘To be sure, my lady,’ Wymarc replied briskly. ‘It cannot always be this wet or the English would have feathers and webbed feet.’ She placed a hand on Emma’s arm. ‘Do not lose heart, I beg you. Not now, when the worst of the voyage is behind us.’

Emma could not help but smile as she looked into the wide brown eyes that regarded her with a mixture of sympathy, pride, and excitement. Wymarc was ever one to look for the sun behind the clouds. She had an irrepressible exuberance – a quality that had not found much favour with Duchess Judith but had endeared her to Emma. The two of them were much the same age, and during the mad weeks of preparation it had been Wymarc’s unbridled enthusiasm for the adventure that lay before them that had buoyed Emma’s spirits and kept her from despair.

‘I will be grateful to leave this ship,’ Emma said, ‘but I fear that the worst is likely yet to come.’ She dreaded this first meeting with the king, and she wanted it behind her. Yet even that, she reminded herself, would not be the worst that she would have to face in the coming days. There was the bedding to get through, but she put that out of her mind for now. ‘When we go ashore, do not leave my side,’ she commanded, ‘even for a moment.’

A bridge spanned the river ahead of them and led to a wide, tower-crowned stone gateway from which banners hung, limp and dripping. Emma could see a throng of folk crowded at the tower’s foot and massed upon its parapets, waving kerchiefs and hats enthusiastically in spite of the rain. A rumble of voices floated across the water towards her in a general roar of excitement and cheers. Armed men in mail tunics and scarlet cloaks lined the path that led from the riverside to the city wall, their black shields overlapping to keep the crowd at bay.

At the water’s edge, four black-clad acolytes, oblivious to the steady downpour, held a scarlet canopy over a scarlet-robed archbishop. A knot of brightly clad noblemen, their fur-lined mantles and hoods testifying to their high rank, clustered behind the prelate, their faces turned expectantly towards the approaching ship.

‘Which of them is the king?’ Wymarc asked.

Emma scanned the men again but none of them fitted the description that Ealdorman Ælfric had given her of Æthelred – a tall, well-built man with long golden hair and a trim beard.

A little shiver of foreboding crept along her spine to mingle with the anxiety already there. Was it possible that he had not come to greet her? She recalled how her brother Richard had made the five-day journey to Bayeux to wed Judith and escort her back to Rouen, and how the count of Turenne had travelled for near a month to sue for the hand of her sister Beatrice. Æthelred, though, had sent a delegation to Normandy to bid for his bride rather than come in person. Could he not even trouble himself to meet her at the city gate?

‘I do not think that he is here,’ she murmured to Wymarc.

‘Perhaps he is waiting to greet you in great state inside the palace,’ Wymarc said, ‘or at the church. Perhaps he thinks you will not wish to see him until you have had a chance to rest from the journey.’

Or perhaps, Emma thought, he is somewhat less than eager to meet his bride. Whatever the reason, it was an affront to her, and her anxiety grew.

The boat drew up to the dock, and Emma recognized Ealdorman Ælfric standing foremost among the nobles waiting to greet her. He had left Normandy some days before she had, and now the sight of his gaunt, old face, already smiling a welcome, cheered her somewhat. He helped her over the gunwale and into the shelter of the canopy, then took both her hands and bent to kiss them.

‘The king sends you greetings, my lady. Your bridegroom wished to come himself, but pressing matters of state have kept him from your side. I am bid to welcome you and escort you to your lodgings in the abbey precincts.’

He had barely finished speaking when the archbishop raised his hands and intoned a blessing, and the noise of the crowd hushed as the Latin words floated on the air. After that Emma was introduced to each nobleman in turn, and she greeted every man with a gracious word and a smile in spite of the misgiving that clutched at her heart. She had been anxious at the prospect of meeting the king. That he had not come to greet her, whatever the reason, only increased her unease.

‘I thank you, my lords,’ she said, in a voice as strong as she could muster, carefully enunciating the tongue-twisting English words, ‘and I thank the people of England for their welcome. May the Lord shower his blessings upon us all.’ The crowd gave a roar and, satisfied that she had pleased them, Emma turned to Ælfric. ‘I beg you, my lord, to tell me when I may look forward to meeting the king.’

The archbishop, an ancient man with a sour expression, raised an eyebrow and pursed his lips in disapproval. ‘You would do well to curb your impatience, my lady,’ he said gruffly. ‘Be content that the king will attend to you in his own good time.’

Stung by his rebuke, Emma had to bite her lip to keep from saying something she might regret. Here was one who disapproved of her. Was it because she was young and a woman, she wondered, or because she was Norman?

It was Ælfric who jumped in to mend the awkward moment.

‘On Sunday,’ he said, ‘the king will greet you at the church door to recite the marriage vows. Immediately afterwards he will escort you into the cathedral for the coronation ceremony.’

Not until Sunday! That was five days hence. What kind of man was this Æthelred that he would not meet with his bride in private for even a few moments of conversation before he wed her? Was this how things were done in England? The sense of panic that she had kept at bay for the last six weeks began to clutch at her again.

‘I wish to meet the king tomorrow,’ she insisted, smiling, although it was an effort. ‘Surely he can grant me a few moments of his good time.’

‘I am sorry, my lady,’ Ælfric said gently. ‘That will not be possible, for the king has not yet arrived in Canterbury. He has sent word that he will not be here before Sunday.’

She could feel the eyes of each nobleman fix upon her, taking her measure, curious to see how she would receive this unwelcome news. She said no more, but nodded to Ælfric in acknowledgement of his apology, doing her best to disguise both her displeasure at the king’s slight and her fear of what it might mean. She doubted that she was very successful. Her hands, she realized, were clenched as tightly as the muscles of her stomach. Drawing a deep breath, she made an effort to relax as she followed in the wake of the archbishop, who had started towards the city gates. She would have turned to search for Wymarc behind her, but she knew instinctively that she must keep her back straight and her head forward.

Ælfric escorted her to a litter draped lavishly with furs beneath a silk-lined canopy. Making a low bow, he handed her into it, and then she was borne on the shoulders of eight noblemen through the streets of Canterbury. She forced herself to smile, lifting her hand to the crowds of folk who lined the way or waved at her from thatched rooftops. She heard cries of ‘Welcome! Welcome to Richard’s daughter!’ over and over again as she was carried through the streets and past the great cathedral towards the abbey.

Her head ached from the noise, and from the effort to hold back tears that clouded her eyes – tears of both gratitude and dismay. The people of this realm had welcomed her with joy, yet the king who was to be her husband had not welcomed her at all. In the midst of this jubilant crowd, she had never felt so achingly alone.

That evening Emma dined with her Norman household in the guest quarters of St Augustine’s abbey. With so many familiar faces about her Emma could almost imagine that she was still in Normandy. She could not dispel, though, the anxiety that she felt at the king’s absence today. He should have been there to greet her, and he had slighted her by staying away.

She called to mind Richard’s parting words five days before, as he accompanied her to the waiting ships.

‘You are not the first bride, Emma, to go to the bed of a foreign king, and you must be very clear about what is expected of you. Bear in mind that you go to your lord not as a woman, but as a queen. In the same way, he comes to you not as a man, but as a king. He will not be father to you, nor lover, nor even friend. Do not expect it. All you can expect from his hands is what any of his subjects can expect, and that is justice and mercy. You, as queen, though, must demand one thing more. You must demand his respect. Never forget that for a moment, and never do anything that might cause you to forfeit it.’

Today Æthelred of England had not shown her the respect that she deserved, although she did not know why. She wished that one of her brothers had accompanied her to England. Surely Duke Richard or Archbishop Robert would have been able to give her some insight into what might be going on in the mind of the king. Instead she was without counsel, and she felt as if she had been thrown rudderless into high seas. She could not reach safe haven, even if she knew what it looked like.

In the meantime, the people in this room depended upon her for direction, and she had very little to give. What she needed was information – not the history lessons that Ealdorman Ælfric had given her but news of the court and of the people in it. If she were at home she would send someone to the kitchens to listen in on what was being said, but she could hardly do that here.

She considered the men and women around her. Only a few members of her household could understand English, much less work their mouths around it well enough to speak it. Wymarc was one, for her stepmother was the daughter of a Kentish lord. Young Hugh of Brittany, who had been one of Richard’s stewards, was another. Her bard, Alain, could recite their poetry, but she was not sure how much of it he actually understood.

And there was her priest, Father Martin. She did not know him and had had little time to speak with him in the weeks before they left Normandy, but he had served her mother well. She knew that he was a scholar, good with languages, and that he had studied for a time in an abbey somewhere here in England. Her mother had said that he was an excellent clerk, for he wrote a fair hand.

At the moment Emma did not need a clerk. What she needed was a spy. Father Martin, clad in fine, dark-coloured wool and with a crucifix hanging at his breast, was the likeliest candidate to gather news within the cathedral precincts. The community there would likely welcome a priest and scholar who was part of the Norman retinue.

She called the priest to her side, and then, after some thought, she summoned Hugh as well. As they knelt before her, she studied their upturned faces, both of them clean-shaven in the Norman style. Apart from that they were a study in contrasts. Father Martin’s lined face and grey hair bespoke his age, and his solemn brown eyes studied her with the gravity of experience. Hugh was youthful and dark, strikingly handsome, with an engaging charm that, she had reason to believe, had captivated Wymarc on the voyage here. Her friend had spoken of him with such admiration that Emma had warned her to have a care for her heart. Still, Hugh’s genial manner was well suited to the task she had in mind for him.

‘I am in need,’ she said, ‘of information about the English. I must know what their concerns are, what they think, what they believe, and, particularly, what they fear.’ She looked at the priest. ‘Father Martin, I want you to mingle with the cathedral community in any place where you can engage them in conversation. Hugh, I want you to go into the market square tomorrow, down to the port and into the alehouses. Find out what the people of England think of their king. Discover what is being said about his marriage. You must not be afraid to tell me what you learn, even if you fear it will displease me. Do you understand?’

When she had dismissed them she felt more composed. She had set something in motion, and soon she would have results. She reminded herself that she was not alone here, and that she had resources, if only she took the care to use them.

The next evening Emma met Hugh and Father Martin in a once barren abbey chamber that her attendants had transformed into a quiet retreat suited to a queen. A brazier burned in the centre of the room, and embroidered hangings covered the cold stone walls. Emma sat in a high-backed chair with cushions behind her shoulders, furs on her lap, and a stool under her feet. As she considered the two men before her, she saw that the priest looked particularly grave, so she turned first to him.

‘Tell me,’ she said.

‘There are … evil rumours, my lady,’ he said slowly, ‘… about the king, and how he obtained his throne.’

Emma frowned. ‘But surely Æthelred inherited the throne from his father,’ she said. ‘Ealdorman Ælfric said that King Edgar died young, and that his son was crowned after that.’

‘That is true,’ the priest said, frowning, ‘but the boy who was crowned after King Edgar was not Æthelred. It was his elder half brother, Edward. In the cathedral scriptorium there are chronicles that report,’ he paused, ‘unsettling events that occurred in those days.’

So Ælfric, whom she had liked so well, had told her only part of the truth. Could she not trust anyone in England then?

‘Go on,’ she said.

‘King Edgar had three sons by two different wives. The middle son died very young, while his father still sat the throne. Some years later, when King Edgar died of a sudden illness, no heir had been named, and the two sons who survived him were born of different mothers. Edward, the eldest, was crowned, but many of the great men in the land questioned his right to the throne, for his mother was not a consecrated queen, and Æthelred’s mother was.’ He paused and heaved a weary sigh before continuing. ‘After he had ruled but three years, King Edward was murdered – brutally, the chronicles say. He was young when he died – only sixteen. It was then that his half brother, Æthelred, was named to the throne by the witan, the group of nobles who advise the king.’

‘And what happened to the murderers?’ she asked. As a brother and a king it would have been Æthelred’s particular duty to punish such a terrible crime.

‘The murderers were never discovered,’ Father Martin said. ‘No one was punished and no restitution paid.’ He hesitated, his expression grim. ‘I persuaded one of the brothers here, an old man now, to tell me what he recalled from that time.’

Again he hesitated, clearly unwilling to burden her with his knowledge. Emma waited, her heart filled with misgiving, and at last Father Martin continued his tale.

‘It was believed by many that Æthelred’s mother, the dowager queen, plotted the murder of her stepson. That was a terrible time, with bloody portents in the night sky that even the priests could not ignore. I am told that last autumn, just before the dowager queen died, the night skies ran with blood again, although the old man I spoke with did not see it.’

Emma sat very still, pondering his words. She knew well the power of rumour and superstition. When her father was alive, Rouen had buzzed for a time with tales that he wandered the streets at midnight, going into darkened churches to battle phantoms and demons. Indeed, it was true that her father had visited the churches by night, for his final illness had bereft him of sleep, and he sought the intercession of one saint after another in his search for healing. But the duke had wrestled with no demons, only with the knowledge of his own coming death. The rumours about him had contained a kernel of truth that had been misshapen by wild conjecture. Perhaps this was the same thing.

‘How long ago did this happen?’ she asked the priest.

‘King Æthelred has ruled England for twenty-three years.’

She did the sums. Æethelred, who was now in his thirty-fifth year, could have been no more than a child when his brother had been murdered. What possible role could a child play in such a heinous act?

‘Tell me, Father Martin,’ she said, ‘do you believe that the king had a hand in his brother’s death?’

The priest fingered the cross at his breast as he pondered her question. At last he said, ‘This is a Christian land, my lady, yet through all the years of Æthelred’s reign, godless men from across the North Sea have raided and burned and tortured this realm. Why would God allow such a thing, unless there was great sin in the land?’

And what greater sin, she thought, than the murder of an anointed king? Was this the truth about Æthelred that no one had been willing to reveal to her?

Her anxiety about the man she was to wed grew, yet troubled as she was, she would rather be armed with knowledge than go to him cloaked in ignorance. She murmured her thanks to the priest. Then, as an afterthought, she reached down and touched his hand. ‘Please pray for me, Father,’ she said, ‘and for the soul of the king.’

As she turned her attention to Hugh she wondered what horror story he might have to tell.

‘The word in the marketplace,’ Hugh volunteered, ‘is that the king has just sent nearly thirty thousand pounds of silver to a Danish host camped on an island off the southern coast. I’m told that the Vikings spent all of last summer burning and robbing in the southern shires, and that the silver,’ he paused and smiled wryly, ‘is meant to discourage them from picking up where they left off when the weather turns fair again.’

‘So the king bribes the Vikings to leave his lands,’ she said. ‘Jesu, it is a vast amount of money.’

‘Aye, my lady,’ Hugh agreed. ‘And the common folk, and even the nobles, it seems, begrudge having to pay the high taxes that the king has imposed to raise it. They complain that first the Danes raid the land, and then the king’s men come and take whatever is left to bribe the Danes to go away.’

‘But where are the warriors?’ she asked. ‘This is a rich land with a wealthy king. Can Æthelred not defend his people?’

Hugh shrugged. ‘The king has his personal guard, as do many of the nobles, but in times of great need he must summon warriors and arms. By the time word of an attack is spread and the levies called up, the Vikings have taken their plunder and made their escape.’ He frowned and shook his head. ‘It is whispered, too, that the king is unlucky. Whenever his soldiers meet the enemy some hapless thing occurs to sway the battle in favour of the outlanders.’

Was it bad luck, she wondered, or, as Father Martin believed, was it God’s curse? And, merciful heaven, what was the difference?

‘My lady,’ Hugh said, ‘my news is not all dismal. There is general rejoicing over your nuptials. The common belief is that the arrival of a new queen can only bring good fortune to England.’

‘I expect the new queen’s dowry will not come amiss, either,’ she said, ‘if the king defends his land with silver instead of steel.’

She dismissed the men and sat a while, pondering all that she had heard. Where was the truth in the rumours, and what secrets lay hidden in the soul of the man she must wed? Even if the king was innocent of his brother’s murder, his throne was bathed in his brother’s blood. She must share that throne. Whatever the fate that lay before Æthelred the king, as his queen she would share that as well.

April 1002
Canterbury, Kent

On Easter Sunday, Æthelred of England took his Norman bride to wife, and he watched with hundreds of others as a circlet of gold was placed upon her head and she was named England’s queen. Afterwards, he presided over his wedding feast in the royal hall near the cathedral. Seated upon the dais, his new queen at his side, Æthelred looked about him and was not entirely pleased with the situation in which he found himself.

He had spent a great deal of coin over the last weeks in an effort to purchase peace for England. Some of it had been settled upon this chit seated next to him, and if her brother kept his promise, England’s coasts would be far more secure than in years past. Whether Richard could be trusted, though, was a question that niggled at him like a sore tooth.

As for the girl, he liked the look of her well enough. She had a smooth, clear complexion, enormous green eyes, and a long, straight nose. Her mouth was too wide, but she seemed to have good teeth, and her voice did not vex him – not yet. Her hair was pale beneath the silken headrail that was held in place by his gift of a golden crown.

He frowned. He should never have agreed to her coronation. His council was to blame for that. Their infernal wrangling had driven him to make a hasty decision. Within hours of signing the marriage documents he had regretted the act, but by then the official scrolls were on their way to Normandy, and it was too late.

His first wife had demanded no crown and had suffered no harm from the lack of it. This one, though, wanted assurances for any children that she might bear, wanted them first in line for the spoils after he died. It would lead to disputes as to which of his offspring were more throne worthy, and if Emma bore a son there would be bad blood between his first family and his second, all because he had given this Norman bitch a circlet of gold.

It had happened before, and his sons knew their family history well enough – knew of the factions that had formed around himself and his brother when their father died. Edward had been the elder, but men had questioned his claim to the crown because Edward’s mother had been a consort and no queen, unlike his own mother, who had bewitched the king into her bed and then convinced him to grant her a crown. It had led to years of unrest between rival nobles, who had backed either Edward or himself – and it had ended in Edward’s murder.

He closed his eyes and, with an effort of will, turned his mind from his dead brother, lest his very thoughts draw him from his grave again. He considered the slim girl beside him, mentally discarding her glimmering gown and the delicate garment beneath it until she was naked but for the pearls that hung in ropes about her neck. He imagined those pearls resting against her high, proud breasts and cascading past the delicate curve of her hips to the pale thatch between her thighs.

Soon he would be lying between those thighs, and the thought made his mouth go dry with anticipation. He emptied his cup of mead and called for more.

Be fruitful and multiply, the archbishop had admonished them when they took their vows. Well, Emma looked as though she could do that well enough, and if she should bear only daughters, so much the better.

He drank again from his cup and again he called for more. At one of the tables below him he could see old Ælfric mouthing something at him. Christ! Another duty to perform, as if taking a Norman slut to wife hadn’t been enough.

Reluctantly he pushed himself to his feet and lifted his golden goblet high, quelling the murmur of the wedding guests.

‘To the Lady Emma of Normandy,’ he bellowed, ‘queen of all England!’

The company responded with cheers, and next to him, his new young queen blushed.

As the revellers stood and raised their cups to her, Emma searched among them for her own people, but she found no familiar faces in the throng. She trusted that they would have found their way to tables somehow. Certainly there was enough food here that no one would go to bed hungry tonight. The king, she had learned, had ordered food tables set up all over the city in celebration of his nuptials, so even the poorest folk would sleep with full bellies for this one night at least. She was glad of it.

She let her gaze wander, over the heads of the guests seated at endless rows of tables, and then along the intricately carved oak columns that marched in two rows down the length of the hall and soared upwards so high that they disappeared into darkness. This was a huge edifice, far larger than her brother’s hall at Fécamp, or even in Rouen. It had obviously been built to inspire awe, and to intimidate. It succeeded on both counts, and in its massive, dim interior she felt small and insignificant … and cold. A breeze fingered its way through the roof thatch to tease the brightly coloured banners hanging from the crossbeams. In its wake, the wall torches and the banks of thick candles danced and flared, throwing shadows that loomed menacingly and then shrank to nothing. A constant draught from somewhere behind her chilled her backside, and she regretted not wearing a second chemise beneath her gown.

She took a sip of mead from the silver cup, which was intricately etched with a tracery of vines – one of several wedding gifts from the king, along with the two finger rings and the crown she wore. The sweet liquor burned her throat but warmed her from within, giving her the courage to consider the man seated beside her, whose brooding expression seemed a fit accompaniment to the cold, dark hall.

She knew that he was several years younger than her brother, but he looked much older than Richard. The long golden hair that Ælfric had described to her was streaked with grey at the temples, and the king’s face was creased and seamed across the forehead and around the mouth and eyes. It struck her, as she studied him with quick, furtive glances, that he was not a happy man. Careworn, she might have said, although Father Martin’s tale of the unpunished murder of a king made her wonder if it was guilt, and not care, that had etched the lines in his face.

On his head he wore a massive golden crown studded with gems that glinted in the firelight, and she pitied him for that. The thing looked heavy, and it must be a punishment to wear it for any length of time. His white tunic, belted at the waist, was woven of fine linen, its sleeves elaborately embroidered in bright colours. The deep blue mantle of shimmering godwebbe that he wore was lined with gold silk and clasped at one shoulder with an enormous gold brooch that was studded with rubies.

The king, taken all in all, looked a powerful and imposing figure. Yet he would have been comely even had he been clad in coarse wool. He carried himself with a fine, noble grace in spite of the weight of that daunting crown. She could not tell from looking at him, though, if he was kind or patient, if he had a sense of humour, or if he could have killed a brother in cold blood.

That last thought, streaking into her head just as she raised her drinking cup to her lips, made her hand tremble so that she nearly slopped the liquor onto her gown. She set the cup down until she could compose herself. For some time now she had been trying to think of something to say to her husband, but he looked so forbidding that she did not know how to begin. The story of the death of King Edward continued to trouble her, boring through her brain like an insidious worm. She could not forget it, and she could not very well ask the king if it was true that he was a kin slayer and king slayer.

For his part, he had said not a single word to her, and she began to wonder if he even realized that she could speak his language. But surely, she thought, Ælfric must have told him that. Nevertheless, all that had passed between them so far had been ceremony, scripted in Latin, and neither one of them had strayed from their assigned words. She had been advised that she must wait for him to initiate the first conversation, and so she had done. But the king had remained dourly silent.

Determined that she would wait no longer, she had been casting about for some topic of conversation, and now she decided to ask about his children. Some of them, at least, had attended the wedding and coronation, for she had seen a flock of gorgeously gowned youngsters, accompanied by what she presumed were nurses and tutors, in one of the side alcoves of the cathedral. She did not see any of them here, though. This was something of a surprise, for she would have expected that at the very least his older children would attend the feast.

‘My lord,’ she said, ‘I do not see your children here. I had hoped to meet them all today. Are they not allowed to attend the feast?’

The king, using a large chunk of bread to fastidiously mop up the juice from a thick slice of roasted lamb, attended to his culinary duties as if she had not spoken. She had begun to despair that he would answer her at all when, still attentive to his plate, he asked, ‘Why did your brother send you instead of your elder sister? Had she no taste for the favours of an English king?’

Emma froze, sensing in his words a danger that belied the casual tone of his voice. So it begins, she thought. Already she must dissemble, tell him enough truth to appease him but not so much that he could guess her brother’s intention to break the pledge he had made.

‘My sister and I,’ she said lightly, ‘do as we are commanded, whether it is our inclination or no. We do not ask for explanation, and I asked for none from my brother regarding his decision to send me here.’ In effect, this was the truth. She had asked her mother, not Richard. ‘Were I to guess, however, I would say that he feared that my sister, who suffers frequently from ill health, would not be strong enough to undertake the duties of a queen.’ She thought about what those duties would demand of her before the evening was over, and took another sip of mead.

‘Perhaps, then,’ said the king, ‘I should have insisted on your sister as my consort, so that I would not be saddled, as I am now, with a wife who demanded the title of queen.’

Stung by his discourtesy and his apparent dissatisfaction with the marriage bargain he had struck, Emma could only stare at him for a moment while she caught her breath. Then she felt the weight of the circlet upon her head as well as the weight of her brother’s final words to her. You must demand the king’s respect. She roused herself to respond.

‘I expect my brother would have made the same demand, whichever sister he sent you. And as you did not insist upon my sister,’ she said, hiding her displeasure with a smile, ‘instead of a wife who might have been a burden to you, you have a queen who can share any burdens that fate may send you. Such is my wyrd, I think.’ She purposely used the term that Ealdorman Ælfric had taken such great pains to explain to her, hoping that it would goad her husband to courtesy, if not respect.

Finished with his bread and gravy, the king took up his goblet, and she wondered how many times he would empty it before the night was over. Still he did not look at her but trained his eyes out over the throng of folk in the hall below them.

‘You are but a child,’ he murmured. ‘What can you possibly know of the burdens of …’ He stopped in mid-sentence, and his face blanched.

Emma followed his gaze and saw that a newly arrived group of several men and a lone woman were striding now up the central aisle.

Æthelred stared at the apparition coming towards him, at his brother’s wraith striding through the smoky haze of the hall. His heart seemed to shatter in his chest, and then, to his even greater terror, he realized that this was no phantom sending. This was a man of flesh and blood. Sweet Christ, this was Edward come alive again from the grave to condemn him. His brother’s familiar visage pinned him with merciless accusation, and although he mouthed a protest, the menacing figure did not stop.

His grip tightened on the goblet in his hand, and his heart pounded so hard that the girl at his side must have heard it, for suddenly he felt her fingers clutch his wrist.

He thrust her away from him, passed a hand across his eyes, then looked again. Edward still advanced upon him through streaks of light and shadow, and Æthelred rose to his feet, poised to summon his guards. But even as he raised his hand he grew uncertain, and he checked the cry upon his lips.

The figure neared the dais, and he saw, bewildered, that it was not Edward who approached but one very like him. And then his confusion cleared and he recognized his son, Athelstan, who, by some trick of chance or the devil, had assumed an uncanny resemblance to the dead king.

He mouthed a curse at the bitter irony of it. Surely this was another punishment sent upon him, to see the wraith that haunted him in the dark looking back at him now from the countenance of his eldest son. His mind flicked to his queen’s assurance that she would share his burdens. What would she think if he were to share with her the burden of his dead brother’s vengeance?

Athelstan reached the dais, and Æthelred hauled in a breath. Good Christ! How long had it been since he had last seen the boy? It must be near a year, yet in that brief space of time his son had matured, in looks at least, from boy to man. Why in Christ’s name did he have to look like that man?

At last he dragged his gaze from his son’s face, and only then did he mark the others who attended him.

‘Ælfhelm,’ he murmured, for it was the ealdorman who stepped forward now to bend the knee with the others and speak.

‘My lord king,’ Ælfhelm said, ‘I beseech your pardon for our late arrival on this auspicious day. We were delayed upon the road.’ He looked up then with not the least sign of regret evident upon his craggy face. ‘I return your sons to you,’ Ælfhelm said, but he was casting an appraising glance now on the young bride, and his mouth twisted into a sneer. ‘They would greet their new … mother.’

Æthelred did not reply. His eyes were drawn again to Athelstan, for he still marvelled at his son’s resemblance to the dead Edward. Finally he considered the others. Ælfhelm’s cubs he knew – the two sons and the daughter. He let his gaze linger on the girl briefly before he fixed his attention on his own whelps.

They should all have been at the ceremonies today. This tardy arrival in the midst of the feast and the scowling faces of his three offspring were meant to underscore their opposition to the marriage. He had been right to think that granting his bride a crown would lead to friction. It had already begun, and Ealdorman Ælfhelm had no doubt fanned the flames of dissension. The old devil would like nothing better than to pit his sons against him, setting them upon him like a pack of hounds.

Well, let them howl their outrage to the moon for all the good it would do them. The deed was done. They would have to live with the consequences, just as he would.

He fixed his eyes upon the thunderous face of his eldest son and said, ‘You are welcome to our feast. It would have done my queen greater homage had you arrived in better time, but go, refresh yourselves. We will speak of this another time.’

He resumed his seat as the whispering began among the guests. There would be rumours in the city tomorrow about the king’s strange behaviour at his wedding feast. He raised his cup, and when he drank he felt the warmth course through him, soothing his tortured nerves. Let them whisper. His brother, the king, was safely dead and in his grave.

He watched his sons melt into the crowd, and he did not miss the look of smouldering resentment that the girl, Elgiva, cast upon the new queen. That amused him. Elgiva’s high rank and wealth assured her a place in the queen’s household. All by herself she would likely be a significant burden for his new bride to shoulder. Emma was welcome to it.

He glanced at his queen and saw that she was watching him, her eyes huge with amazement and speculation. He scowled. She wearied him, and he wanted rid of her.

He stood again and, drawing her up beside him, he announced, ‘The queen will now retire, and she bids you all good night.’

The assembly rose amid the usual bawdy shouts and applause, while Emma raised an eyebrow in surprise. But she said nothing, merely offered him a gracious courtesy before turning abruptly to follow the servants who would lead her to his private chamber.

Satisfied at having the dais to himself, Æthelred sat down and applied himself once more to his food and drink. He would tend to his queen soon enough.

Emma surveyed the great royal bed, which was sumptuously draped with curtains and bedecked with furs and intricately embroidered pillows. It had been arranged here just this morning, she knew, for all of the accoutrements of the king’s bedchamber accompanied him wherever he went – hangings for the walls, pelts for the floor, the finest linens and furs for the bedding, even the candle sconces and braziers for light and warmth. She felt a shiver of foreboding, though, as she looked solemnly about her. There could never be enough candles, she thought, to light this chamber. All the furnishings were dark and oppressive, in spite of their richness.

Her own household goods were already on their way to Winchester, for she would have no need of them here. Tonight, and while the king stayed in Canterbury, she would share his chamber and his bed. It made her feel like she was just another piece of chattel, like a gilded coffer or a handsomely embroidered cushion.

She tried to put that thought aside as the dozen women who had escorted her from the hall began the business of preparing her to greet her husband. Emma had assisted with this same task herself when her sister Beatrice had wed, and she recalled how Beatrice had chattered and laughed all through the undressing. Emma felt too numb to speak, and she submitted dumbly to her attendants’ ministrations.

Most of the women were strangers to her, for it was an honour granted by the king to assist his bride at the bedding. She had been allowed to choose only two attendants from her Norman retinue, and so Wymarc was here with her, and her old nurse, Margot, looking like a little brown wren amid all the fine ladies.

When Emma had been stripped of her wedding finery and garbed in the delicate shift that Gunnora had embroidered with her own hands, Emma was escorted to the bed. She exchanged the appropriate courtesies with the women of Æthelred’s court, and then she dismissed them. It was not politic, she knew, but she could no longer bear their curious stares. When only Wymarc and Margot remained in the room, Emma collapsed backwards upon the bed cushions, exhausted.

A moment later Margot was at her side, offering her a cup of wine. ‘It is good Norman wine, that,’ she said, ‘from your own stock. Drink it all, my lady. It will do you good.’

‘God bless you, Margot,’ Emma said, sitting up and grasping the cup. She took a greedy gulp of the wine, then considered the flagon still in Margot’s hand. ‘Put that here, near the bed, and you’d best pour some for yourselves. I expect we might have a long wait. Something tells me that the king will not be in any hurry to lie with his new queen tonight.’

Wymarc’s unflagging smile dimmed a bit. ‘Why do you say that? He should be eager to attend you. You are the most beautiful woman in this hall.’

‘Beauty, I fear, is no great advantage,’ Emma said slowly, staring into her wine cup. ‘The king seems to regret his … purchase.’

She looked up at Wymarc, whose face clouded with misgiving.

‘That cannot be true,’ Wymarc said. ‘Why would he regret it?’

Emma sighed, exasperated. ‘I do not know why! I only know that he is in an ill temper, and it is directed at me. He all but threw me out of the hall.’

‘Dear God,’ Wymarc breathed. She exchanged a worried glance with Margot, then suggested hopefully, ‘Could it be that he is just a nervous bridegroom? He is so much older than you; perhaps he is afraid that he will disappoint you.’

It was kind of Wymarc to look for an excuse for the king’s odd behaviour, but she had not heard Æthelred’s curt words. Emma took another swallow of the wine, thinking with dread of the bedding to come. If he had been so cold at the table, what would he be like in the bedchamber?

Then she remembered the stricken look on the king’s face when he saw his sons. He had been more upset with them even than with her.

‘There was something else,’ she said, ‘something to do with his sons. They came late to the feast. When the king saw them he was so distracted that I thought he had been taken by some kind of seizure. He recovered himself in a moment, but it gave me a fright.’

She described the undercurrent of tension between the king and his offspring. Even now it flayed her nerves to recall it. The king’s sons had been hostile, but Æthelred had not looked angry as much as frightened. His eyes had grown wide and his face had gone pale with terror, as if he were facing Death itself.

‘Mayhap it was one of their companions that frightened the king,’ Margot suggested.

‘That may be so,’ Emma said slowly, remembering the older man who had addressed the king. His face had been seamed and rugged, with a flat nose and small, mean eyes – a hard, nightmarish face behind a thick, black beard. But could even a man such as that strike terror in the king?

‘Oh, God,’ she said, pulling her knees up and dropping her face against them, ‘there is so much that I do not know.’ She raised her head and thrust her empty cup at Wymarc for more wine. ‘The man’s name is Ælfhelm,’ she said. ‘In the morning I want Hugh to discover everything that he can about this Ælfhelm and report to me. You must find Hugh tonight and tell him.’

‘Of course,’ Wymarc said.

Emma sat back against the pillows, clutching the goblet with both hands, reviewing all the events of the day and trying to keep her thoughts away from what must occur next.

‘My lady queen,’ Margot said softly from her stool beside the bed, ‘do you know what to expect from the king tonight?’

Emma laughed. Suddenly it all seemed funny to her. She looked at the cup in her hand and decided that it must be the wine, for there was really nothing funny about it at all.

‘My mother spoke to me,’ she said, ‘and Judith told me of her wedding night. I think, though, that my own experience is likely to be somewhat less,’ she groped for a word, ‘friendly.’

Margot nodded. ‘Likely Judith knew her husband’s touch already before they were wed, as they were betrothed many months. It will be different for you,’ she said gently, ‘for you know nothing of your husband. May I give you a word of advice, my lady?’

Emma nodded, eager for any counsel – anything to erase the appalling image of one of her brother’s fine stallions mounting a mare that came all too easily to her mind.

‘You must not be afraid,’ Margot said, ‘no matter what he says or what he does. He may be gentle with you,’ she took a little breath and looked hard at Emma, ‘or he may not. I have no knowledge of the English, or of kings, or of this Æthelred as a man. But whatever he does, it will go better for you if you are easy and calm.’ She smiled. ‘The wine will help with that, to be sure. But in this room, my lady, and especially on this night, you must make yourself go soft in every part of you, the better to accept his hardness, if you take my meaning.’

‘Yes,’ Emma said, ‘I think I understand you.’ It seemed an impossible task, though, given how brittle she felt, as if she might break into a thousand pieces at the slightest touch.

‘You must use your mind,’ Margot went on. ‘You may not have to, of course. He may be the kind of man who gentles a woman the way a good rider gentles a horse. If he does that, if he uses his hands to soothe you, it will be easy for you to respond in kind. Just follow his lead. But you are a horsewoman, my lady. You have seen some men, surely, who use their horses with a fury that has no gentleness in it. The more the horse resists, the harder it goes for him.’

‘She is no horse!’ Wymarc objected, her face stricken at the old woman’s words.

‘No, she is not,’ Margot agreed, ‘for she has a sharp mind, and she can use it. If need be, my lady, let it take you to whatever time and place you choose that will ease you. I hope you will not have to, but you must remember that your mind can provide you with refuge, should you need it.’

The large, scored candle in the bedchamber had marked the passage of two weary hours before Emma heard the heavy door open. Margot and Wymarc scrambled to their feet as the king entered, escorted by six of his councillors. Emma watched Æthelred warily from her place on the bed, bearing Margot’s words in mind and trying not to stiffen. Still, she felt the pulse beat hard in her throat as the king made his royal entrance, crownless now, although still draped in the magnificent blue and gold cloak.

‘Leave us,’ he said peremptorily to the attendants, with a wave of dismissal. And in a moment the room was empty but for the two of them.

Æthelred stood a few feet from the bed, looking down at her. Emma searched for telltale signs that he was somewhat the worse for drink. She knew well enough that wedding feasts often ended in debauchery, and she had allowed herself to hope that the king might be too overcome with ale or wine or mead, or all three, to want anything to do with her. But he did not weave or sway as he surveyed her, and it occurred to her that he might very well be more sober than she was.

‘Get up,’ he ordered, ‘and take off your shift. I want to see what I’ve purchased.’

The command sent a wave of shock through her. Nothing that anyone had told her had prepared her for this. It confirmed her opinion that Æthelred regarded her as little more than chattel. She masked her resentment, though, and she tried to loosen her muscles, doing her best to follow Margot’s advice. Without a word she slipped off the bed, untied the ribbons at her throat, and let her shift pool on the floor at her feet.

She blessed Margot under her breath, because the wine she had consumed made the task seem ridiculous rather than onerous. She had to stifle the urge to giggle. She had stood naked like this often enough in front of serving women who washed her from head to foot, and she willed herself to think of this as no different. The chamber was cool, though, in spite of the charcoal brazier, and she felt her nipples harden. She lifted her chin a bit and, giddy with wine, was sorely tempted to ask the king to disrobe so she could inspect him as well, but she thought better of it. It would be a new sight for her, and she had no idea how she would respond to her first glimpse of a naked man. In any event, he would have to undress sooner or later. She had but to wait.

Æthelred gazed sullenly at his bride, desire warring with suspicion. It disturbed him that she had complied with his crude command so readily. He had spoken out of anger – at his councillors for inflicting this marriage upon him, at her brother for demanding a coronation, and at Ælfhelm, damn his soul, for turning his own sons against him. None of it was the girl’s fault, yet now that she had disrobed so brazenly in front of him, he was forced to wonder why.

Cursing, he made for the small table that held a flagon and poured a cup of wine.

‘Are you a maid?’ he asked. That would explain why Richard had foisted this younger sister upon him. She was used goods. For all he knew she might be carrying a Norman brat in her belly.

He stared at her over the rim of his cup and saw that her entire body had flushed in response to his question.

‘I am a maid,’ she said. ‘I am also your queen, and I will not be treated like some slut from the gutter.’

He downed the wine, tossed the cup to the floor, and began to remove his garments. ‘You are queen by my pleasure,’ he said. ‘You would do well to remember it. And in the morning, when the council inspects the bed linens, we will know for a surety whether or not you are a slut from the gutter, as you so colourfully put it. Now get into the bed and let us get on with the matter at hand.’

Later, when she lay asleep at his side, Æthelred stared wide-eyed into the flames of the candles that flanked the bed. He had done his duty as king and husband in as efficient a manner as possible. The girl, to her credit, had done the same. She was no whore, if he was any judge. She had lain beneath him as unresponsive and boneless as a sleeping cat. He had expected something better, after seeing her naked before him like some Viking goddess; but she had disappointed him.

It was just as well. He wanted as little to do with her as possible – only enough to satisfy the demands of church and kingship.

He closed his eyes, and in that darkness his thoughts strayed to his dead wife. He had been but seventeen when he wed her, and she was twenty. In all the long years of their marriage he had never seen her naked. When he lay with her she had responded like a nun, tensing with repugnance at the act that she was forced to endure. Although she had never refused him, she had borne his attentions every time in virtuous silence, had likely prayed her way through each ordeal. Whenever she quickened with child she informed him immediately, with undisguised satisfaction, for while she was breeding she did not have to accommodate the carnal activity that she found so odious. She was always happiest when she was pregnant. He was content then, too, for he found his pleasure elsewhere, with women who spread their legs for him with relish.

He sat up in the bed to study the girl curled beneath the furs, her hair spilling over the pillows like silver in the candlelight. She did not seem to be repulsed by the act. He had even caught her studying his face with detached bemusement as he entered her, and it had made him wonder what was going through her mind.

It might be possible to forge a bond with her, if he took the time to do it. She was young enough and inexperienced enough to be trained as a lover. It could be quite pleasant to share his bed with her.

But that would give her some measure of power over him, and as his queen she had too much power already. He did not want a queen – did not even want a wife, curse it – yet here she was.

He lay down again, on his side, his back to the other body in the bed.

He owed this girl nothing. He would use her for his pleasure because her nakedness aroused him. He would fill her belly with a child and would order his Mass priest to beseech heaven for a daughter. Beyond that he would give her no more than what the terms of the marriage contract required of him. Her title of queen would have to satisfy her, for that and a child were all that she would get from him.

April 1002
Canterbury, Kent

On Easter Monday over one hundred women crowded into the great hall of the archbishop’s palace to greet Æthelred’s bride. Elgiva arrived late, with Groa in her wake. As she tried to make her way towards the dais, a fat matron stinking of cloves pressed hard against her, and the sharply sweet smell of the spice was almost Elgiva’s undoing. In an instant she was a child again, hiding in her mother’s clothes coffer – unable to move, scarce able to breathe, too weak to free herself, and enveloped by darkness, the scent of cloves, and a mindless panic.

That same panic clawed at her now, and she began to whimper as she tried to twist away from the stench of the spice and from the crowd that engulfed her. Sickened and faint, she pulled her own cloak against her face, but it did little to block the pungent smell of cloves. She felt her gorge rise and she thought she would be sick, but Groa took her hand and squeezed it to steady her.

‘Let us make for the wall,’ Groa said urgently. ‘You will be able to breathe there.’

Frantic and dizzy, she blindly followed Groa as the old woman doggedly elbowed her way past a score of protesting noblewomen. She felt herself growing more and more faint, but she clung to Groa’s hand, and at last they reached the wall. The next thing she knew Groa had cleared a bench of gawkers and helped her up. A blast of frigid air from a narrow window scored her face, and she drew in a long breath that was deliciously free of the stink of cloves and wet wool.

Slowly her light-headedness began to dissipate, and she rested her now throbbing head against the wall as Groa joined her on the bench to watch the proceedings taking place at the top of the room. When Elgiva saw the new queen, though, her gorge rose again. Emma, flanked by guards and attendants, sat enthroned beneath a golden canopy. Regally swathed in a deep blue mantle, her blond hair braided into two long plaits, she wore upon her head the same golden circlet that the archbishop had placed there yesterday.

‘It should have been you,’ Groa said softly.

And that was the truth of it. That bland, pasty-faced Norman witch had cheated her out of her destiny. Who would have imagined that Æthelred would take a foreign bride, and then make her a queen? It should never have happened. The king had made the wrong choice, and her father was not the only one who said so. By now even the king must realize his error. She had not missed the way his eyes had lingered on her face yesterday when she stood with his sons below the royal table. If he did not already regret his choice of bride, he surely would in time.

An endless parade of women made obeisance before the queen, presented their gifts and received tokens from the queen in return – a pin or a brooch, and always of silver. The queen, it seemed, knew how to purchase affection. Well, Emma would not purchase Elgiva’s affection, no matter how precious the gift.

Dear God! How long would she be forced to live in the queen’s household? Months, certainly. Maybe even years.

She felt ill again at the thought of having to scrape and bow before Emma, but even that, she supposed, was better than mouldering away in Northamptonshire. This queen, at least, was young – not like Æthelred’s last wife, who had been older, even, than the king.

And like it or not, she would be one of the queen’s household. Her father had made that clear when they broke their fast together this morning.

‘You must be my eyes and my ears at court,’ he had said, ‘for I journey north at week’s end until the witan gathers again in summer. I want you to make every effort to gain the trust of the queen. She is little more than a hostage for her brother’s good behaviour now, but if she gives the king a son, there is no telling what power she might wield.’

‘God forbid,’ Elgiva had murmured, ‘that she should give Æthelred a son.’

Her father had merely shrugged and left her. She had dawdled over her food, pondering her father’s words and wondering if she might eventually manoeuvre herself into Athelstan’s bed, and if not his, mayhap the king’s. She was toying with that possibility again as Groa touched her arm.

‘You had best go forward, my lady,’ Groa urged, ‘if you wish to make your obeisance before the queen. I will lead you through the crowd.’ She held out the gift that Elgiva would present to the bride.

Elgiva took another long gulp of air and allowed Groa to help her from her perch. She cared not what her father wanted. She would not smile and fawn before this queen like the other fools here. She had heard their talk yesterday – the whispers about the beautiful young queen and her noble lineage. Emma, they said, had been named after her mother, the Frankish king’s sister, who had wed Emma’s father when the two were little more than children.

That was nothing but a skald’s tale, invented out of sunbeams and moondust and probably spread abroad by the king himself to enhance his bride’s prestige. Groa had nosed out the truth of it, and Elgiva intended to make sure that the women of the court learned the queen’s secret.

When she finally reached the canopied throne, and the steward had announced her name and titles, she made her obligatory courtesy before Emma, but she did not smile. She would not simper for this queen, although she had chosen the bridal gift with great care. She rose from her obeisance and held up the small, intricately carved ivory casket. On its lid a fierce dragon ship sailed upon an ivory sea, and along the casket’s back and sides a monster of the deep twisted and writhed.

‘I bring you a treasure from Jorvik, the capital of my father’s vast district of Northumbria,’ she said, pitching her voice so that the women all around her would be able to hear. ‘It is of Danish workmanship, and therefore a fitting tribute for our Danish queen. Your mother, I am told, is a Dane. Is this not so?’

The words echoed in the room, and Emma felt a tremor in their wake, like the tingling in the air just before a lightning bolt strikes. There was little love for the Danes in Æthelred’s England, and Emma suspected that her Danish mother had probably been kept a royal secret – until now. Few outside of Normandy would concern themselves with the marriage practices of the Norman duke who had had two wives at the same time – one a Danish heiress who brought him lands and children and the other a barren Frankish princess whom he had not wanted.

Emma looked into the dark, triumphant eyes of the girl who stood before her and saw there the same contempt that she had read in Ealdorman Ælfhelm’s face the night before. Like father, like daughter, then. She had yet to discover the source of their enmity, but she would have to begin to deal with it this very moment.

‘It is true, Lady Elgiva, that my mother was born a Dane. I, however, was born a Norman,’ she emphasized the last word, and now she stood up so that she could be seen easily, directing her next words to all the women in the hall. ‘Yesterday, when I wed your king, I was born anew before God and all the world as an English woman and an English queen.’ The room erupted in riotous applause, and Emma acknowledged it with a smile before she turned solemn eyes upon the Lady Elgiva. ‘I thank you, lady, for your gift. It symbolizes, I trust, your allegiance to me and to my husband. In token of my acknowledgement of your honoured position among my attendants, I bid you accept this ring.’

Emma slipped a gold ring from her finger and placed it in Elgiva’s palm. She doubted that the gesture would win the young woman’s friendship, never mind her allegiance. Nevertheless, she had to make the effort, for Elgiva was to be part of her retinue, and live in the queen’s quarters. It would be, she feared, akin to living with a beautiful bird that had an unfortunate tendency to bite.

Æthelred let his three eldest sons stew for several days before summoning them to his private chamber. As they had been in no hurry to attend his nuptials, he would let them wait upon his pleasure to question them about it.

He knew that they resented his queen, fearing that any son Emma might bear would have a stronger claim to the throne than their own.

Nevertheless, he was still the one wearing the crown, still the one his sons needed to placate, not the other way round. Apparently they needed to be reminded of that.

Eyeing them as they came into the room, he said not a word. Let them sweat a little while longer. Athelstan met his gaze unblinkingly, but there was an uneasy question in his eyes. Edmund, the dark one, did not dare to even lift his head. Ecbert smiled sheepishly until Æthelred’s glare wiped the idiotic grin from his face.

‘What is it that you would say to me?’ Æthelred growled, addressing Athelstan, whose uncanny resemblance to the dead Edward continued to gall him, like a constant reproach.

‘Why did you give her a crown?’ Athelstan demanded.

Edmund flinched, and well he might. The question was far too raw. Æthelred kept his temper, but only just.

‘Is it thus that you question the policy of your king, as if you were my equal? Who in Christ’s name do you think you are to do so?’

‘I am your heir,’ Athelstan replied, bristling like a hedgehog. ‘I have every right to ask such a question. You have taken a Norman bride to your bed and made her your queen. What do you expect me to do, wish you happiness? Shall I pretend that my own interests are not at stake?’

‘You have no interests beyond those that I give you,’ Æthelred thundered back at him. ‘You have no monies nor estates nor powers other than those that have been granted by me. Christ! You are too young to even have a thought in your head that does not agree with my wishes.’

‘You are wrong there, my lord. Indeed, I have many thoughts, and almost none of them, I expect, agree with your wishes.’

‘Then it should have come as no surprise to you,’ Æthelred spat, ‘that I did not seek your counsel before I made my decision to wed.’

His son flushed, his expression wounded. ‘And yet,’ he said, ‘it did surprise me. It surprised all of us. For weeks we waited for a summons from you, my lord, requesting us to attend your council. Yet it did not come. Tell me then: whose counsel did you seek? Which of your brilliant advisers encouraged you to grant a crown to a foreign bride? I warrant it was not Ealdorman Ælfhelm. He makes no secret of his belief that you are either mad or a fool.’

So, here it was. Here was what he had suspected all along. Ælfhelm had turned even his own sons against him.

‘Has Ælfhelm persuaded you, then, to his point of view?’ he demanded. ‘All of you?’ He raked them all with his glance, but no one would answer that query. Even Athelstan looked somewhat taken aback now, by his own audacious words. ‘I knew when I placed you under Ælfhelm’s leadership that he would try to twist your minds against me, but I had hoped that my sons would show more fealty to their father and king. It seems that my trust was misplaced.’

‘My lord,’ Athelstan’s tone was placating now. ‘I did not mean to—’

‘I know exactly what you meant. By word and deed you have declared yourself. Since you hold my marriage and my queen in such low esteem, you are banished from my presence and from my court. Get you to St Albans, all three of you, until I send for you again. Lord Ælfhelm has taught you to question your king. Let us see if the good brothers at the abbey can teach you patience and humility. Now get out.’

Outside the king’s chamber Athelstan halted, stunned by his own temerity and what it had wrought. He felt his brothers’ accusing eyes on him, and he dreaded the censure that he knew was coming.

‘That went well,’ Ecbert said. ‘Banished to St Albans until God knows when. Thank you for that, brother.’

‘Only a fool,’ Edmund volunteered, ‘calls the king a fool.’

‘I did not call him a fool,’ Athelstan protested.

‘No,’ Edmund replied, ‘you called him a fool and a madman. Even better! Whatever possessed you to speak to him in such a way?’

‘He bid me speak my mind, and I did. Yes, all right, I made an error. I believed that he truly wanted to know what I thought.’

‘Jesu, Athelstan! He had no need to ask for that. It has been writ on your face for days.’

‘What would you have had me do? Kiss his hand and bid him be happy between the legs of his new queen? He would see it for a lie.’

‘Could you not have found some middle ground?’ Edmund persisted. ‘You undermine your own cause by being so blunt! Your wish is to have some influence upon the king’s decisions, yet how are we to do that if we are banished from the court?’

‘It could be worse,’ Ecbert said brightly. ‘He could have sent us to Glastonbury, where we’d have to spend the summer in the bog lands fighting the midges. At least St Albans is on solid ground and easily within a day’s ride of London, with plenty of inns and alehouses along the way.’

‘Shut up, Ecbert,’ Athelstan snapped. ‘The king still thinks of us as children, and as long as he does, we will never be able to influence him.’

‘His bride is the same age as you are,’ Edmund replied. ‘Clearly he does not think her a child. We had better hope, though, that she has no more influence upon him than we do.’

That, in particular, made Athelstan wince. They would be spending the next weeks or months at St Albans while the new queen would be spending them in his father’s bed. If she gave him a son, then what? The prophecy of the seeress still rang like a warning bell in his head, and he could see no way to explain it, unless his father’s Norman bride should persuade the king to disinherit his elder sons.

July 1002
Near Winchester, Hampshire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wymarc’s mouth twisted in an uncharacteristic scowl.

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

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

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

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

Wymarc looked, astonished, at Margot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 1002
Winchester, Hampshire

Æthelred stood beside a light-filled window embrasure in his private chamber and greeted the arrival of his eldest son with a grunt. He half anticipated another outburst of resentment like the one he had had to endure before he’d banished the pup to St Albans, and he did not relish the prospect.

Christ, he was weary of it all – the restless, sleep-troubled nights, the days of wrangling with councillors and churchmen, and underneath it all the incessant rumour of trouble that he knew was far more than rumour. He had dispatched this recalcitrant son of his to gather information, and now, eyeing Athelstan as he bent the knee with sober regard, Æthelred took heart. Perhaps the whelp was beginning to learn humility. Perhaps he would be of some use after all.

‘You followed my instructions?’ Æthelred asked, coiling himself into his chair and gesturing for his son to stand.

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘And do you understand the problem that I face?’

Athelstan inclined his head. ‘Some years ago you forged an alliance with Viking raiders who were ravaging our lands, you bade them serve you as mercenaries, and rewarded them with gold and properties. Now you have bands of well-trained, well-armed Vikings, most of them Danes, settled throughout your kingdom.’

Æthelred scowled. His son had grasped the situation well enough, if not the policy behind it.

‘I had little choice at the time,’ he said, ‘nor am I the first ruler to settle mercenaries in his realm. The Frankish king did it. Even the great Alfred was forced to allow Danes to settle north of the River Humber.’

‘But in Alfred’s time,’ his son said, his expression carefully bland, ‘the Danes settled in lands where few of Alfred’s people dwelt. Your mercenaries are in Devonshire, Hampshire, and Oxfordshire – in the very heart of your kingdom.’

His son did not say it, but Æthelred heard the unspoken accusation. He had placed a pack of wolves in the sheepfold.

‘I gave them estates,’ he growled, ‘and they gave their oaths that they would not turn against me.’

Yet they had done so, and with a vengeance. After several years of abiding by the pledges they had made to him, the dogs of war had been loosed upon England.

Æthelred, remembering, grimaced, and rubbed at a suddenly painful temple with his fingertips.

One of those dogs, Pallig, was wed to the half sister of Swein Forkbeard, and when Forkbeard had attacked the southern coast last year, Pallig and his men had joined in the assault. They had pillaged and burned all across Wessex, and the English host that rallied against them had failed to stop them.

He’d had no choice but to bribe the lot of them yet again to leave his realm in peace. Forkbeard had taken his gold to his ships and sailed east, but Pallig had merely made new pledges of peace and retreated to his estates. He and others like him were like boils upon the land that would, one day, erupt to plague him once more. He could not trust them.

‘You spoke to Pallig?’ he asked.

‘I spoke with Pallig and with his wife, Gunhild.’

‘Think you he will keep his oaths to me?’ He watched his son closely and spotted the hesitation before the answer was given. So the lad, too, saw the threat.

‘My lord,’ Athelstan said, ‘Pallig is no farmer. He is a mercenary down to his soul – an adventurer who thrives on danger and excitement. If you do not put him to some use, he will make more mischief in spite of his pledges to you.’

Æthelred waved the suggestion away.

‘Once before I set the fox to guarding the chickens and I paid the price. I will not make that mistake again. Pallig may be living on estates that I granted him, but he is Swein’s man at heart. He is like a knife at my throat.’

‘No, my lord,’ his son objected. Æthelred glared at his presumption but let him have his say. ‘Pallig is more like a kingdom unto himself,’ Athelstan went on, ‘not bound to any man. He takes whatever he feels is his by right and by force of arms. It is not the having that he loves, it is the getting. If you could but find a way to bend him to your will—’

‘Men like Pallig do not bend!’ he snarled. ‘Best you learn that now, boy. If money will not sway him, nothing will.’ Good Christ, he had dealt with vermin like Pallig for two decades; he knew them far better than this cub of his, who had not yet seen eighteen summers.

Athelstan frowned at his father, sympathy for the king’s dilemma warring with exasperation. That England was beset by enemies from within as well as from without was the king’s own doing. Granted, the marriage to Emma might stem the tide of Viking raids, but Æthelred had made a devil’s bargain when he had given land to men like Pallig. They were like feral dogs that must be tamed and muzzled. He could think of only one way to do it.

‘Pallig has a son, my lord,’ he said urgently, ‘newly born. Take the boy as hostage for his father’s good behaviour.’ If the boy were raised at court, he would become English and no Dane. Build trust with one child, and others, no doubt, would follow.

‘Hostage?’ Æthelred almost spat the word. ‘It is far too late for that now. We might have made it a condition in March, before we made the gafol payment, but now we have nothing with which to bargain. Pallig will not willingly hand his son over to me.’ He fingered his beard, his face brooding and dark. ‘He is safe on his own lands, surrounded by his warriors, a law unto himself. Nor is he the only one. There are a dozen more like him, spread across the southern shires. Who is to say what schemes they may be plotting?’

Listening to his father’s groundless suspicions, Athelstan’s exasperation finally overcame his sympathy.

‘Who is to say that they are plotting any schemes at all?’ he demanded. ‘What if they are not? What if Pallig merely craves action? He is a shipman! Can you not put together a fleet and charge him with guarding our coast? My lord, what other choice have you?’

His father made no answer, and Athelstan, looking into a face that he suddenly realized was haggard and far too pale, felt a sudden chill along his spine, as if a blade had been drawn through ice and laid against his skin. The king was staring, red-rimmed eyes fixed and frightened, at something behind Athelstan. He whipped around, fearing to see some horror there, yet he saw nothing save a bank of candles whose meagre flames trembled in a shadowy corner, where the daylight did not reach.

He turned back to the king, and still his father stared, his face working as he mouthed a soundless cry, knuckles whitening as he clutched the carved dragon heads beneath his hands.

‘My lord!’ Athelstan cried. Was this some fever of the mind sprung from the cares that beset a king? Some disease that struck suddenly and left nothing but the shell of a man in its wake?

He reached out and clasped his father’s hand, and he was stunned by how cold the taut flesh felt beneath his palm. His own blood seemed to freeze in response, and he felt suddenly afraid that he was watching his father die.

He grasped the king’s shoulders and shook him, not knowing what else to do. In response the watery blue eyes came to rest upon his own, but the king’s distress seemed to become even more acute. His father bent forward, his body rigid as he beat his breast and moaned a wordless cry, tortured by some invisible enemy.

‘My lord!’ Athelstan cried again, raging at his helplessness. Why did no one hear him, no one come to offer aid?

Yet even as he formed that thought, his father’s body relaxed, and the bent head dropped into the king’s slender hands. Athelstan’s panic eased, and he felt as if he had just wakened from a nightmare.

Slowly his father raised his head, and now his face was creased and grey as the wide eyes fixed purposefully on Athelstan.

‘What did you see?’ the king demanded in a hoarse, urgent whisper.

Athelstan hesitated, unnerved by the intensity of his father’s gaze, his mind groping desperately for a response that would appease the king.

‘I saw shadows, my lord,’ he replied at last. ‘Only shadows.’ And I saw a king half mad with fear, he thought. But of that he dared not speak.

His father drew a long breath and released it as he repeated Athelstan’s response.

‘Only shadows,’ he whispered, and he pressed his hands against his eyes, as if he would banish whatever baleful vision lingered there.

Athelstan roused himself to fetch wine from the nearby table that held cups and a flagon. He watched while his father drank, and a hundred questions formed in his mind.

‘Were you in pain?’ he asked. ‘Has this’ – he searched for some way to describe it – ‘affliction struck before?’

His father, much revived, it appeared, by the wine, threw him a dark, almost furtive glance.

‘It was but weariness, nothing more,’ he murmured. ‘It has passed now. There are far weightier matters to occupy both my mind and yours. You will forget it.’ He left his chair and began to pace, restless and distracted. ‘There have been signs,’ he said heavily, ‘of trouble to come. I have seen portents—’ He flung up an arm as if to sweep away his own words. ‘Nay, I need no portents to know that Pallig is dangerous. As you say, he is no farmer. Neither are the men who answer to him. They will become restless, and then they will strike.’

The next moment the chamber door opened, and his father’s steward, Hubert, entered carrying a packet of documents. The king raised a hand to forestall whatever Hubert might say and looked gravely at Athelstan.

‘Did you see any indications that Pallig was preparing for battle?’

‘No, my lord,’ he said, mystified both by what he had just witnessed as well as by his father’s apparent determination to ignore it.

The king grimaced, as if that was not the answer he had anticipated. ‘Then there is nothing more to do, for now.’ He brushed past Athelstan as he made for his chair and beckoned to the steward. ‘Leave me. I have business with Hubert.’

Athelstan stood there for a moment, troubled, unwilling to leave before he had gained a better understanding of what he had just seen. But both men ignored him, and he knew better than to disobey his father’s command. He strode slowly from the chamber and, glancing back, he saw his father’s eyes now fixed hard upon him, and in those eyes was a warning that it would be perilous for him to ignore.

As he made his way through the great hall, something that Bishop Ælfheah had said to him in the spring came back to him: The king is troubled in his mind. Had the bishop been witness to a similar occurrence, then? Ælfheah had not explained himself, and Athelstan dared not question him about it now. That threatening glance from his father had commanded his silence. He stepped from the royal apartments into the sunshine of late summer, his mind still wrestling with the king’s strange behaviour and his talk of signs and portents.

Yet he, too, had been given a sign by the seeress near Saltford – albeit one he was unwilling to believe. And last winter there had been rumours from the north that men had seen columns of light shimmering in the night sky – fierce angels with swords, it was said, come to punish men for their sins.

Truth to tell, his father was not the only one disturbed by such portents, yet what steps could anyone take to vanquish foreboding or to prevent some cataclysm that was lurking in the future? And then, recalling his interview with the king, he knew with certainty that his father must be planning steps of some kind. Why else had he been sent to speak with Pallig? Yet if his father did have some presentiment of disaster might not his very efforts to avert it bring about the misfortune that he so dreaded?

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