The Price of Blood

March 1006

Calne, Wiltshire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wulfstan, too, pushed aside his bowl.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scowling, he tossed his bread to the table.

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

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

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

Cannot? Æthelred wondered. Or will not?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Where is the Lady Elgiva?’ he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Three

March 1006

Aldeborne Manor, Northamptonshire

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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