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

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СКАЧАТЬ and third cup of wine. There were reports from her reeve, as she had said, as well as a petition from a host of Devonshire landholders urging Emma to visit her properties in the southwest.

      Of course they would want her to make a royal progress to her dower lands. After all, it had been the southern nobles who had supported her as his bride in preference to Elgiva. They wished to curry her favour now, get her among them and fete her in the hope of solidifying her royal patronage. He’d had a letter from one of his Devonshire thegns some months ago suggesting just such a journey. He had dismissed it at the time. Now, though, he thought, fondling his cup as he considered the idea, things had changed.

      If Duke Richard had allied himself with King Swein, then for the next four months all of England’s southern coast would be at risk of attack from ships striking across the Narrow Sea, and England’s fleet was too small to patrol that long sweep of coast. So what if he were to use Emma as a shield for the western shires? If he placed her in Devonshire and made certain that her brother knew of it, Richard would doubtless seek to protect Emma and her lands by urging his Danish allies to aim their strikes further east. That would leave him with only half of the coast to defend. It was perfect.

      He tossed the scrolls onto the bed and began to dress.

      ‘You will make that progress through your dower lands,’ he told her. ‘The southern lords would take it amiss if you refuse them. I will send Ealdorman Ælfric and his men to escort you. And now I think on it, you may wish to stop at some of the shrines along your route and pray that your womb will soon be fruitful again.’

      He watched her face as she weighed his words, and the consternation he read there amused him. Emma wanted a child. It was not obedience that had driven her to spread her legs for him today but the hope that his seed would take root within her. A son would garner her more lands, more money from his own purse, and even more support from the bishops than she had now. Once Emma had a son she would be a force to be reckoned with, something his damned bishops seemed unable to grasp. Well, they could hardly expect him to bed her if she wasn’t here, which would leave him free to seek his pleasure elsewhere. And Emma would have to wait a little longer for that child.

      She made no reply to his suggestion but turned away from him, fingers busily braiding her hair. He pulled on his breecs and his tunic, and then noticed the small scroll that lay on the floor. Languidly he reached for it, glancing quickly at its lines of script.

       And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand.

      He stiffened, the menace in the words as palpable as a physical blow.

      Christ, what fiend had given him this?

      He tried to visualize the faces that had surrounded him in the palace yard, but he had taken too little notice of the rabble. He read again the baleful words – the Almighty’s curse upon Cain. As his mind quailed from the threat it carried, he felt, to his horror, a menacing cold come upon him.

      He guessed what the chill portended, but surely he had to be wrong. He had freed himself of his brother’s vengeful shade when he had rid himself of the Danes who had schemed to destroy him. The fetch was gone! It could not come again to hound him. Even God would not be so cruel!

      He steeled mind and body against the panic rising within him, but the growing cold clasped him in its unrelenting embrace, its icy tendrils reaching beneath his flesh to clutch at his heart. The scroll slipped from his hand, and his eyes, frozen wide, could only stare into a void that swirled and spun. All light fled the chamber, and in the darkness his brother’s glowering visage shivered before him like an unsteady flame, filling his soul with dread.

      This time, though, he refused to succumb to the numbing terror. A rage sparked within him, bright as a glowing coal. He wanted to throttle the horror that faced him, to channel all his fear and fury into a lightning bolt of violence that would shatter this fiendish exhalation and send it back to hell. He struggled against the invisible bonds that held him, but he was spellbound, encased in a shroud of ice.

      ‘Why?’ he howled, wrenching the word out of the depths of his soul. ‘Speak, damn you! What do you want of me?’

      There was no answer, and with a strangled curse and a supreme effort of will he clasped the wine cup and dashed it at his brother’s face. Edward’s shade neither moved nor spoke but merely stared at him with empty eyes while time seemed to stand still.

      In those endless moments Æthelred felt a desperate weariness come over him, and a chilling heaviness in his chest, as if a stone lay upon it. He tried again to shut his eyes, but he could only stare into Edward’s bloodied face, until at last the shadow slowly receded and the chamber glowed with light and warmth again.

      Freed at last from his brother’s grasp, he sank to the bed and wept.

      Emma stood transfixed, her eyes flicking between her weeping lord and the red stain on the wall where the cup had shattered. How many eternities, she wondered, had passed while she stood here, bewildered and aghast, watching as the king struggled against some invisible threat that drove him past distraction into madness?

      She began to breathe again as she realized that whatever had held him in thrall seemed to have set him free now, for even the king’s weeping had ceased. Yet she made no move to go to him. The memory of his petty cruelty was too fresh in her mind, and she could not be sure that he would not turn his rage upon her. So she stood, immobile, uncertain what to do.

      ‘I am cold,’ he whispered.

      The words held a plea that she could not ignore, pulling her from her trance. She snatched up her robe and went to him, wrapping the thick fur and wool about his shoulders.

      ‘My lord, I fear you are ill,’ she said. His face was white and waxen, like a candle melted in the sun.

      ‘Burn it,’ he whispered.

      She frowned. Burn what? She glanced at the parchments tumbled around him on the bed.

      ‘The scroll,’ he said, gesturing to something on the floor nearby. ‘Burn it!’

      She spotted it then, a scrap the size of her finger. Was this the cause of his madness? Could so small a thing scatter the wits of a king? She picked it up, sorely tempted to unroll and read it first, but Æthelred was watching her with eyes sharp as blue steel. Obediently, she fed the scroll to the lamp’s flame.

      ‘What is it?’ she asked.

      ‘No business of yours. Just do what you’re told, damn you,’ he said, his words slurred from the wine.

      She watched it burn, aware that it might hold the key to the puzzle that was Æthelred of England, and it was with a bitter pang of frustration that she dropped the last bit into the lamp and watched it curl to ash.

      She heard him heave a great sigh, and she turned to look at him. Some colour had returned to his face, but the weariness had not left it. He looked sick and haggard, with dark crescents beneath his eyes. He was a man who slept but little, she knew, and not for the first time she wondered what dark dreams troubled his rest. Now she watched him slough off her robe and rise to his feet, but slowly, as if he were still burdened with a great weight.

      ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, his voice leaden, ‘you will deliver to me the letter for your brother, and you will begin preparations for your journey to Exeter.’

      He left her then, his gait slow and heavy, while she stood in stunned СКАЧАТЬ