The Price of Blood. Patricia Bracewell

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      Going to his side, she gazed out towards the rushing, moonlit river, and she drew in a long breath, for her heart ached for both of them.

      ‘I have wanted to tell you before this,’ she said, ‘how much I grieve for the loss of your brother.’ That grief was bound up now with her sorrow at the death of her sister, but she would not burden him with that news tonight.

      ‘There is no need for you to speak of it,’ he said. ‘I know what is in your heart.’

      She studied his face, the half that she could see just visible in the moonglow. Did he truly know what she felt? His brother Edmund had not believed that she could grieve for Ecbert, and for some time now she had been afraid that Edmund’s distrust of her, like some foul contagion, had spread to Athelstan as well. But in the next moment, when he turned to face her, the look he cast upon her dispelled all doubt.

      ‘I am not Edmund,’ he said gently, answering the question she had not spoken.

      She looked into eyes filled with such sorrow and longing that she was suddenly frightened. How she wanted to reach for him, to draw him into her arms and console him as a sister might.

      Yet she dared not offer him that comfort, for it was not a sister’s love that she carried locked within her heart.

      ‘No,’ she said softly. ‘You are not Edmund. Forgive me for doubting you.’

      She very nearly touched him then, nearly placed her hand upon his arm where it lay so close to hers there on the palisade. But she resisted the temptation, turning instead to look out towards the river, knowing that she should go inside as he had urged her, yet unable to bring herself to leave him.

      In the darkness she was reminded of another time that they had been alone together – when they had both succumbed to temptation. When desire and passion had overwhelmed wisdom and duty and solemn vows.

      She had been shriven of that sin long ago, had promised God that she would sin no more. But the human heart, she had learned, was a thing not easily governed. And although she had thought that tiny bit of her was nothing more than a withered relic locked inside a casket of gold, now she felt it yearning for this man at her side.

      After a time it was Athelstan who broke the uneasy silence between them.

      ‘Your son appears to be thriving,’ he said, ‘and my father does not yet mistrust the boy. I envy him that.’

      She heard the pain in his voice, sharp as a knife, and she did what little she could to blunt it.

      ‘Edward is too young yet to disturb his father’s peace of mind,’ she said. ‘The king reserves most of his displeasure, I fear, for the son who stands closest to the throne.’ She knew what had occurred in the king’s chamber on Easter Eve, for her young spy had dutifully reported the angry words that Æthelred had flung at Athelstan that night.

      He gave her a sour smile. ‘Nothing I do, it seems, will earn for me my father’s good opinion. Since he cannot bear the sight of me, I shall return to London tomorrow. Let him make of that whatever he likes.’

      She bit her lip, afraid for him. The king was uneasy on his throne, and because of that the sons of Ælfhelm lay in chains tonight, under heavy guard.

      ‘Your father is suspicious because you do not attend him,’ she insisted. Why could he not see that? ‘When you are absent from court for months at a time he imagines that you are working against him in secret. Athelstan,’ she whispered, pleading with him, ‘do not return to London yet. Stay with your father. Break bread with him. Hunt with him. Partake in his councils. You cannot win his confidence if you are not with him.’

      He kept his eyes focused on the distant darkness and did not meet her gaze.

      ‘I leave for London at first light,’ he said, as if she had not spoken. Then he turned to her, and the passion that flared in his eyes seared her to the depths of her soul. ‘You know why.’

      Yes, she knew why. For a moment they stared at each other. They did not touch or speak, but she read in his face all the longing and despair that she knew he must see in hers.

      ‘Go to your chamber, lady,’ he said softly, ‘before we give my father good reason to distrust us both.’

       Chapter Nine

       Easter Monday, April 1006

       Western Mercia

      Elgiva could not remember ever being so cold. She rubbed her arms for warmth while Alric fumbled with flint and steel to light a fire. They were in a crumbling hovel of wattle and daub – a swineherd’s shelter she guessed, although she could not tell where. She had lost all sense of direction once the sun had gone down, but until then Alric had led her along narrow tracks, mostly through wide swathes of forestland. Sometimes, when they came to a clearing and she looked to her left, she could see the dyke that marked England’s border with the Wælisc kingdoms.

      She edged nearer to Alric and the fire pit, away from the horses that he had insisted on bringing into the shelter with them, the two of them grooming the beasts with straw as best they could even before he would turn his hand to lighting a fire. She watched him coax the spark into life, a thick shock of brown hair falling over his eyes as he worked. What little she could see of his face, shadowed with a day-old beard, was pale and grimly set. His hands, as he fed twigs to the tiny flame, were trembling.

      He was cold, too, then. Not from the night chill, though, any more than she was.

      As the flames began to lick at the bits of wood and the stacked turf, he placed their saddles on the ground at the fire’s edge so that they made a kind of bench. He motioned for her to sit and she did so, wrapping her mantle about her and holding her hands to the smoky fire. She watched him take off his sword belt and lay it close. Then he sat beside her, handed her a skin of water, and from a satchel drew a half-eaten loaf and a block of cheese to share between them. She realized suddenly how thirsty she was, and she took a long drink of water.

      Once, years before, she had travelled rough like this, when she and her brother Wulf had fled from Exeter with the Danes at their backs. They’d had a large group of armed men as escort then, had been well provisioned, too, for it was high summer and the land was bountiful. The Danes had been no more than a distant threat.

      That had seemed like sport compared to this. She hadn’t been so afraid then.

      She looked at the dry bread in her hand, but her stomach recoiled at the thought of food. She could think only of her father, and that he was dead.

      Earlier, when they’d been forced to stop for a time to allow the horses to rest and graze, she had flung a question at Alric about what had happened. But he had clasped a hand over her mouth, listening for sounds of pursuit, hissing for silence. She had been frightened before, but it was worse after that, and she had swallowed all her questions.

      Now, though, she had to know. However bad it had been, she had to know.

      ‘How was my father killed?’ She was hunched over, staring into the fire, bracing herself against whatever she was about to hear.

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