The Price of Blood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Easter Monday, April 1006

Cookham, Berkshire

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet she had not known.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Nine

Easter Monday, April 1006

Western Mercia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beside her, Alric shifted forward as well.

‘He took an arrow in the chest.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Alric wasn’t finished.

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

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

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

But Alric was shaking his head.

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

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

And her brothers were with the king.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He nodded, and pocketed the ring.

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

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