The Price of Blood. Patricia Bracewell

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СКАЧАТЬ in the chest.’

      ‘An arrow!’ She straightened, gaping at him. ‘But he was hunting. It might have been an accident.’ This could all be a misunderstanding. Her father might even still be alive. She could leave this stinking hovel in the morning and go back to Shrewsbury, discover how her father fared.

      ‘It was not just your father,’ he said, then took a long pull from the water skin, set it on the ground, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. ‘It was all your father’s men, too – his falconer, his grooms, the four hearth companions, and the two retainers who rode with him. All of them dead.’

      She stared at his face, sculpted into harsh angles by the firelight. No accident, then. And no chance that her father was still alive. The hope that had flickered in her mind shuddered and died, and she recalled Alric’s words in the chapel, that it had been a trap.

      ‘Yet you escaped,’ she whispered. ‘How?’

      ‘I was late to the hunt, still mead-drunk from last night’s feast. When I awoke, the others were gone, but I knew they planned to loose the falcons on the heath below Shrewsbury. So I rode that way, thinking to join the hunt. I was still in the woods when I heard the shouting and realized that something was wrong.’ He drew a breath, grimacing at whatever picture was in his mind. ‘By the time I reached the forest edge, your father and the others lay on the ground in a wide clearing with arrows in their guts. Eadric and his men were already inspecting the bodies, making sure that—’

      He stopped abruptly, glanced at her, and began again.

      ‘It was an ambush, and Eadric must have planned the whole thing. His archers had been hidden among the trees and they turned the meadow into a killing ground.’

      She imagined how it must have been – horses and men confused by the onslaught of arrows, men cursing, crying out in pain, and after that, silence. In the end, it probably hadn’t been a feathered shaft that killed her father, but a knife or a sword blade. And still she could not believe that it was true. It seemed unreal, like a tale told by a scop who would change the ending to suit her if she commanded it.

      But Alric wasn’t finished.

      ‘The bastards never saw me,’ he spat. ‘They were too bent on stripping the bodies and keeping the hounds from—’ He cursed, then snapped his mouth shut. ‘I went back to the manor to find you. I climbed the palisade easily enough, but I would have been hard-pressed to know where to look if I hadn’t seen you going into the chapel.’

      She closed her eyes. She was trembling so hard that her teeth were chattering, and she clasped her hands tight, trying to focus – not on what had happened, but on what she must do next.

      ‘I must get to my brothers,’ she said between shallow breaths. ‘I have to tell them what Eadric has done so they can demand a wergild. The king has to make Eadric pay for this.’

      But Alric was shaking his head.

      ‘Nay, lady,’ he said, ‘Eadric would never have done this thing unless the king himself commanded it. Æthelred must have discovered the plots that your father was hatching with the Danes. He wanted your father dead. Eadric will be rewarded, not punished, for this day’s work.’

      She felt suddenly dizzy, the walls around her spinning so that she had to drop her head to her knees to make them stop. This was Æthelred’s response to the message she had sent him. But she had never dreamed that the king would do something so savage. To cut down the premier ealdorman of England was an act that spoke of a hatred so fierce it was not likely to stop there.

      And her brothers were with the king.

      ‘What will he do to Wulf and Ufegeat?’ she whispered.

      ‘If they are still alive,’ Alric said, ‘I doubt they will be so for long. You cannot help them, lady. You must look to your own safety.’

      Suddenly the day’s events became too real, and she rocked forward and back, hands against her mouth to stifle the wail that was swelling in her throat. She felt Alric’s arms go round her, and she gave herself up to the terror of what she had set in motion. She had wanted her father punished, but not like this.

      Why had the fool chosen to wed her to a Danish lord? It was a decision that made no sense to her, and now they must all pay for it. Even she must pay for it.

      That thought made her pull away from Alric and wipe her eyes with her hands. She would not weep for her father. Had he treated her better he would still be alive, and she would not be here now.

      You must look to your own safety, Alric had said. And he was right. She was still alive. And although the world around her had changed utterly, she was still who she had ever been – the daughter of Ealdorman Ælfhelm, granddaughter of Wulfrun of Tamworth, and descendant of Wulfric the Black. She had lands and she had money, and there were men who would help her if she could but get to them.

      ‘My father’s thegns in Northampton will protect me from the king,’ she said. ‘You must take me there.’

      Alric snorted. ‘That is exactly where Eadric and the king will expect you to go. There may already be king’s guards posted at the gates of your father’s manors, and by tomorrow they will be hunting for you all over Mercia.’

      Of course; her father’s estates would be watched. Likely she could not even get a message to the men who might be of most use to her. In any case, many of her father’s closest allies would be with the king at the Easter court, and so at risk themselves.

      She had no way of knowing how hot the king’s vengeance would blaze, or how far. If Æthelred should find her, what would he do to her? Would he murder her as well? Or would he merely imprison her, cast her into some black cell where she could never be found? He would certainly not wed her to any of his sons.

      Yet that was where her destiny lay, she was certain of it. She had been promised that she would be queen, although how she was to make that come about she could not see. Not yet.

      ‘I must get as far away from Æthelred as swiftly as I can. Go where he cannot reach me.’ She must find a protector – someone with men and arms who would not be afraid to use them against the king if need be.

      ‘Then you must go either west into the Wælisc lands,’ he said, ‘or east to the Danelaw.’

      ‘Not west,’ she said. ‘I would be still within reach of Eadric, and I have no kinsmen there to protect me.’ She must go into the Danelaw, then. They had little love there for Æthelred – or so her father always said. Whom could she trust, though, to resist the lure of gold if the king should put a price upon her head? She ran through the list of her father’s allies, and then she had the answer. ‘We will go to Thurbrand,’ she said, ‘to the Lord of Holderness.’

      Thurbrand had never been tempted by anything that Æthelred could offer him. She had once heard her father call him an old pirate, and chide him for shunning the rewards given to those who attended the king. But Thurbrand had vowed that he wanted neither the rewards nor the responsibilities that bending the knee to Æthelred would gain. So he remained in his fastness on the edge of the Danish sea, plotting against his English enemies in Jorvik, paying lip service to the House of Cerdic, and governing his people like a half king.

      ‘We’ll have to take a ship, then,’ Alric said, ‘for we could not hope to make it across Mercia with the king’s men after us. At first light we’ll go to Chester. The harbour there СКАЧАТЬ