The Emma of Normandy 2-book Collection: Shadow on the Crown and The Price of Blood. Patricia Bracewell

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.’

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