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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ is it not?’

      She gazed at him and remained stubbornly silent. She should welcome him to her bed, for that was the duty she owed to her husband, lord, and king. She owed it to herself, for she had a desperate need to bear a child. Yet she could not do it. She could not rid her mind of the images of burning children, and it was all she could do to keep her anger and loathing from showing in her face.

      Æthelred studied his lady wife in the candle glow. Seated in her cushioned chair she looked every inch the queen. Even garbed in just her nightdress she carried herself with a regal air in spite of her youth. The soft, thick shawl of fine-spun black wool that she had flung about her shoulders set off the whiteness of her skin. Her hair, loosened from its modest day-time braid, hung about her in soft waves that fell like a milky stream into her lap.

      In the six months since their nuptials he had formed no particular fondness for her, but he felt an enormous pride in owning something so exquisitely beautiful.

      Emma, though, did not fully appreciate her own good fortune at having been chosen as his queen. There was something lacking in her expression whenever she looked at him. Even now she regarded him with distaste, as if the daughter of an upstart duke considered herself better than an English king. He had thought to bend her allegiance to him by sending her people away, but still she kept herself apart. When she looked at him her glance was cold, with no glint of gratitude or approval. Christ, it galled him.

      He tossed back a mouthful of wine and sat down on her vast, curtained bed.

      ‘It was unwise of you to absent yourself from the hall tonight, lady,’ he said, ‘for it was your duty as queen to be there. Surely you are aware that the Danish tide that would have engulfed us has been checked. God has made me the instrument of His Divine Will, and I have saved all of us, even you, from a terrible danger. Your voice should have been raised with all the others in prayers of thanksgiving. Yet you seem unmoved.’

      ‘Indeed, my lord, you wrong me,’ she said.

      He raised an eyebrow at her, awaiting her excuse.

      ‘How could one not be moved,’ she went on, ‘by the slaughter of innocents?’

      Good Christ. The girl was either mad or a fool to speak so to him.

      ‘Innocents? Is that how you name them? A barbarous people with no regard for life or property? Folk who burn, pillage, murder, and rape, and who would teach their children to do the same? You would fear them if you had seen the destruction that they have wrought upon our towns and villages.’

      Her eyes flashed at him now, and her mouth twisted in scorn.

      ‘And with this act, have you not unleashed death and destruction upon your people? The church of St Frideswide in Oxford should have been a place of sanctuary, yet it became a funeral pyre for women and children upon your order. If you fear the Danes so much, then you must fear me as well. My mother is a Dane, a barbarian as you say. Do you not tremble that I might slay all your children in their beds? I have heard it said that English princes have some cause to fear their stepmothers.’

      As soon as the words left her mouth Emma knew that she had gone too far. The king’s anger towards her had been smouldering from the moment he entered the room, and now she had fanned the flames into fury. She knew, instinctively, that she should run, but she had nowhere to go. In an instant he had dashed his cup to the floor and covered the distance between them with a single step. He slapped her hard across the face, and before she could recover from the blow, he had grasped her roughly and pulled her to her feet.

      ‘Do you threaten my children, you Norman bitch?’ He shook her, and for the first time in her life she was afraid of what a man might do to her.

      ‘My lord, I do not!’ she gasped through rattling teeth. ‘I meant only to remind you that you have many folk in your realm, and not all of them are English.’ She tried to calm her voice, to speak with the gravity of a priest or a councillor. ‘If you hold all the Danes in your kingdom responsible for the actions of one man, my lord, then you do them a grave injustice. My blood, too, is Danish, yet I am loyal to my king. Surely I am not alone in this?’

      She looked into his eyes, and her stomach twisted with fear as she realized that he was too far gone in drink to listen to reason.

      ‘I know your blood well enough, bitch,’ he snarled at her. ‘Best you be wary of mine. If you do not fear the Danes, then I suggest you cultivate some fear of me!’ He shook her again, but although Emma writhed in his grasp, she could not get away from him. ‘I bought and paid for you with English gold, and I have yet to see any decent return for my money, not even the seed of a half Norman brat taking root in your belly. Perhaps I have been at fault, treating you too gently. Mayhap you prefer more barbarous treatment, in keeping with your ancestry.’

      ‘No, my …’ she began, but he cuffed her again.

      Dazed by the force of this second blow, she barely struggled as he wrestled her to the bed. When he threw her roughly to the mattress she tried to curl herself into a ball, but he used his knee to trap her legs. One of his hands sprawled against her face, stifling her scream and pushing her head down hard against the bedding. With his other hand he grasped the skirt of her gown, rucking it up to bare her legs and thighs, and she knew then what he would do. She felt his weight on top of her, driving the air from her lungs so that she had to struggle to breathe against the hand that covered her nose and mouth. She arched her back, trying to ease the agonizing pressure on her scalp from the tug of her long hair, trapped beneath the weight of their two bodies.

      She pushed against his chest with her hands, clawing at him, desperate for air. But Æthelred had been wielding a sword since he was a child. His arms were strong, and her fists had no effect on him. Panicking, she feared that she must suffocate there underneath his weight, until finally he raised himself above her and she was able to snatch a breath. She used it to scream as he brutally thrust himself inside her over and over.

      When he was done he collapsed on top of her once more, but he’d moved his hand from her face, and she opened her mouth on a sob to draw in a lungful of blessed air. He roused himself at that, grasping her head with both hands, holding her down as he covered her mouth with his and thrust his tongue inside her, robbing her of breath once more and making her panic swell again. He ground his mouth against hers, using his teeth to score her lips before lifting his head. When she looked at his face, only inches from hers, she saw her blood on his mouth.

      ‘I should have done that from the first,’ he said, ‘marked you as my property. You are not a Dane, lady, nor even a Norman any more. You have my English seed inside you, and that makes you an English woman and nothing else. Never forget it again.’

      He stood up then, and she turned onto her side, crawling up further onto the bed and pulling her knees up to her chest. She did not see him leave.

      News of the massacre on the Feast of St Brice reached Athelstan as he was hunting in Hwicce Wood. He listened to the lurid reports in disbelief, then immediately set out for Oxford with a small company to discover what truth lay behind the grisly tales.

      They approached the settlement of Pallig and Gunhild late in the afternoon of a mid-November day, accompanied by a dismal, steady rain. The outer palisade stood deserted, the gate yawned wide, and a rank stench filled the air. In the centre of the compound, a gruesome pile of charred human remains, slick and wet from the rain, lay open to the sky. Beyond it, the great wooden hall and its outbuildings stood whole and intact, but devoid of any signs of life.

      Athelstan СКАЧАТЬ