Shadow on the Crown

‘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?’