The Price of Blood. Patricia Bracewell

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      He shrugged. ‘Impossible to say. Much will depend on the weather and on how quickly we can get passage on ships bound where we wish to go. It may take us months, and if it does, what does it matter? It will do you no harm to disappear from England for a time. Let Æthelred wonder what has become of you.’

      That prospect cheered her. She would be the missing piece on the game board that was England. They would probably search the abbeys for her, and the king would grow frantic when he could not find her. It was hardly recompense for her father’s murder, but it was a beginning.

      ‘We must get word to Thurbrand,’ she said, ‘that I am making my way there. Can it be done?’

      ‘Yes, but’ – he held up her hand and the gold and gems that covered each finger glittered in the firelight – ‘it may cost you some of these baubles.’

      He turned her hand over and ran a fingertip across her palm, and she was astonished by her response – desire shimmering through her like summer lightning, the heat of it easing her fear. Her body remembered Alric well, it seemed, for he had pleasured her like this before, years ago, and she was sorely tempted to lose herself in the sensations that she knew he could arouse in her. But once she set her foot on that path there would be no going back, and she had no wish to knock at Thurbrand’s gate with Alric’s brat in her belly.

      She clasped his hand between her palms and held it tight.

      ‘I am your lord now, Alric,’ she said, ‘and I expect you to serve me as you served my father.’ He could rape her if he wanted to, she supposed. She would not have the physical strength to resist him, and even if she did, where was she to run? Her father had trusted Alric, though, had been generous with him; she hoped that she could do the same. She released his hand, slipped a ring from her finger, and placed it in his palm. ‘You have done well by me today,’ she said, ‘and I give you this as a pledge of far greater favours to come. Will you protect me until we reach Holderness?’

      She watched him closely, saw the cocked brow and the speculative look in his eye. Had any woman ever refused Alric’s attempt at seduction? Likely she was the first.

      He nodded, and pocketed the ring.

      ‘I am your man, my lady,’ he said, ‘to Holderness and beyond, if need be.’

      ‘Good.’ She held up her hands. ‘The rest of these baubles we will use to get us there. And in Chester you will buy me a fine tunic and breecs. The king’s men will be looking for a woman and a man, not a young lord and his servant.’

      They settled themselves to sleep then, on either side of the fire. For a long time, though, she lay awake, staring into the dying flames and pondering her future. If her brothers were dead, there was no man now who could command her except the king. And once she slipped free of whatever net Æthelred might throw out to snare her, she could claim her estates and marry. She could marry any man she wished.

      She closed her eyes, and as she let herself drift towards sleep she wondered where Lord Athelstan was. She wondered if he realized just how valuable she could be to him.

       April 1006

       Near Saltford, Oxfordshire

      Athelstan halted his horse beside the standing stone that pointed skyward like a gnarled finger. In the shallow valley in front of him, beyond the ring of stunted oaks, he could see the circle of stones and the figure seated at its centre, waiting.

      It was not too late to turn back; not too late to make his way to London as he had intended when he left his father’s hall. Even now he did not know if he had come here of his own free will or if he had been drawn by some force that he did not understand.

      He knew only that he was afraid – for himself, for the king, for England.

      A succession of grim possibilities had been coursing through his mind for days now in an endless, looping string. Any move that his father made against Ælfhelm might split the kingdom. Any action that he himself might take to avert such a split would add to the suspicions his father was already nursing against him. Any hint of discord between the king, his sons, and his thegns would bring Viking raiders to their shores like wolves drawn to a bleating lamb, and that might well destroy England altogether.

      Below him, the woman seated beside the fire did not look up, but she must know that he was here. He could not shake off the sensation that she had called him – that she had some answer to give him, if he could but ask the right question.

      That, too, made him afraid.

      Above him the sky darkened, then brightened again, as clouds drifted across the face of the sun.

      The sky was of two minds, he thought, just as he was. But he’d come this far already, three days’ ride in the wrong direction.

      So he swung off his horse and led it down the hill, leaving it to graze while he walked into the circle to take his place across the fire from the seeress. As they regarded each other for a long, silent moment, it crossed his mind that she had suffered some wasting sickness, for her face was thinner than he remembered, her nose as sharp and pointed as a merlin’s beak, and her skin creased with lines that had not been there two winters ago. He glanced past her, to the daub and wattle hut that was her dwelling. When last he was here he had left behind a purse of silver, but she had clearly not spent it on her comforts.

      Finally she broke the silence.

      ‘Twice before this you have come to me, lord, and twice you left here doubting the truth of the words I spoke to you. Will this time be any different?’

      How did she know that he had doubted her? Perhaps it was not such a difficult thing to divine, though. No man wished to believe in a future that was bleak.

      ‘Mayhap it depends on the question asked and the answer given,’ he replied.

      She nodded. ‘Ask your question, then, lord, and I will give what answer I can.’

      He paused, and as he looked into her eyes the question that he would pose came to him at last.

      ‘Is it possible for a man to change his fate?’

      The black eyes flashed at him, or perhaps he was merely seeing the flames reflected there.

      ‘Every man’s wyrd is set, my lord, for it is the fate of every man to die. That end is inescapable.’

      ‘That end, yes,’ he agreed. ‘But there is far more to any man’s life than just the leaving of it. Is there only one path that a man must follow to his life’s end?’

      ‘One path only,’ she said. ‘Yet not every step upon that path is carved in stone.’

      It seemed to him that her words were a riddle set within a maze.

      ‘Then how,’ he asked, ‘can anyone read a man’s future?’

      She dropped her gaze from his, frowning into the fire.

      ‘The future of any man’s life is not a path that runs along a plain, my lord, but one that follows a trail over mountains and chasms that are hidden in mist. Sometimes, for a brief spell, the mist clears, and one who has the СКАЧАТЬ