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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ