The Price of Blood. Patricia Bracewell

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СКАЧАТЬ anyone could respond, Wymarc entered the chamber with a quick step, and Emma, relieved, drew her into an embrace. They had been parted for only a week, yet it seemed far longer. Wymarc was a bright, comforting presence in her household – and had been since the day they left Normandy together for England. Four years ago that was – four years since Emma stood at the door of Canterbury Cathedral as the peace-weaving bride of the English king, with Wymarc looking on from only half a step away.

      She had missed Wymarc this past week.

      ‘Margot has taken Robert down to the millpool,’ Wymarc said, ‘to look for ducklings.’ She shook her head. ‘It is a marvel that a woman of her years can keep pace with my young son, yet she does it.’

      Emma smiled, imagining Margot, as small and cheerful as a wren, walking hand in hand with a child not quite two winters old. Children, though, had ever been the centre of Margot’s world. Healer and midwife, she had been Emma’s guide since birth – and the nearest thing to a mother that Emma had in England.

      She glanced at Wulfa and Ælfa, who were already shedding their mud-spattered cyrtels for fresh garments.

      ‘The girls will be glad to see Margot,’ she said. ‘Ælfa took a fall this morning and wants a salve for the cut on her knee. And Edyth’ – she nodded towards one of the beds where Æthelred’s eldest daughter was curled up tightly, knees to chest – ‘yesterday she bled for the first time and she’s feeling wretched, of course, and swears that she’s ill. She’ll listen to no words of reassurance from me, but I expect that Margot can persuade her that she’s not about to die.’

      At this the expression in Wymarc’s usually merry brown eyes grew guarded, and the warning glance she cast towards the girls told Emma that something was wrong but that an explanation would have to wait until they could speak privately.

      She changed quickly into clean stockings, linen shift, and a dark grey woollen cyrtel, then she drew Wymarc aside.

      ‘What is amiss?’ she asked, taking the silken headrail that Wymarc was holding out to her. ‘Is it something to do with Edmund? I saw his bannermen as I came into the yard.’

      ‘I pray it is not true,’ Wymarc whispered, ‘but there is a rumour that one of the æthelings has died in London.’ She clutched Emma’s hand. ‘Emma, I do not know who it is.’

      The headrail slipped, forgotten, from Emma’s fingers. She stared at Wymarc and had to will herself to breathe. Edmund had been with Athelstan and Ecbert in London. Was it possible that one of them was dead?

      Holy Mary, she prayed, let it not be Athelstan.

      She had been on God’s earth for nineteen summers, had been wife and queen for four of them, and had borne a babe who was heir to England’s crown. In all that time she had loved but one man and, God forgive her, that man was not her royal husband but his eldest son.

      Clasping her hands together to stop their trembling, she pressed them against her mouth and shut her eyes.

      ‘God have mercy,’ she whispered, then looked to Wymarc. ‘I must go to the king.’

      Her thoughts flew back to that moment on the hill above the manor and the foreboding that had shaken her. Had she sensed some trouble in the air then – a portent of loss greater than she could bear to imagine?

      Sweet Virgin, she prayed again, let it not be Athelstan.

      She took long, slow breaths and walked with a measured step to disguise the fear that clutched at her heart, to try not to think of how wretched the world would be if Athelstan were not in it.

      Nodding to the guards at the entrance to the great hall, she slipped inside. Torches flamed in their sockets along the walls and a fire roared in the central pit, but the vast chamber, which should have been busy with preparations for the evening meal, was all but empty. Æthelred sat on the dais in his great chair with Edmund kneeling before him. The king was bent forward, his silver-streaked, tawny hair contrasting with his son’s darker, dishevelled locks. The king’s steward, Hubert, stood to one side, dictating something to a scribe; a gaggle of servants hovered nearby looking frightened.

      Filled with dread, Emma walked silently and swiftly to the dais and sank into the chair placed beside the king’s. Æthelred did not even mark her entrance, so absorbed was he in what Edmund was saying. Edmund’s face, she saw with despair, was wet with tears, and she forced herself to listen to him in silence, swallowing the urgent query that was on her lips.

      ‘It came on suddenly, and he was in agony from the start,’ he said in a voice laced with grief. ‘The leeches gave him a purgative, but that only seemed to make him worse. They bled him, to try to release the evil humours, but even I could see that they thought it was futile. A corruption had taken hold inside, they said, and only a miracle would spare him. They tried to dose him with poppy juice to ease his pain, but what little he swallowed he spewed back again. It was as if some devil would not allow him any succour, would not even let him sleep. His suffering was terrible, my lord. He did not deserve such torment.’

      Edmund’s voice broke, but he took a breath, mastered his grief, and went on.

      ‘On the second morning the bishop arrived with the relics of Saint Erkenwald and a clutch of priests. They prayed for a miracle, but by midday I was begging God to put an end to his agony.’ He drew a heavy breath. ‘That prayer, at least, was answered. I am come to you straight from Ecbert’s deathbed, my lord. Athelstan insisted that you hear it from one of us and no other.’

      Emma dropped her head into her hands, unable to keep back her tears. She mourned for Ecbert, and she grieved for Athelstan, who had lost his dearest companion. Yet even as she wept for pity, she murmured a prayer of thanks. Athelstan was alive.

      ‘Why do you weep, lady?’ Edmund’s harsh voice flayed her. ‘Your own son thrives, does he not? And Ecbert was nothing to you.’

      She looked into the grief-ravaged face of her stepson, unsurprised by his words. At seventeen he was a grown man, but even as a youth he had regarded her with resentment and suspicion.

      ‘I am no monster, Edmund,’ she said. ‘I grieve for Ecbert as I would for the death of any of my husband’s children.’

      ‘Ecbert would not want your—’

      ‘Edmund.’ Æthelred’s voice silenced his son.

      For once Emma was grateful for the rigid control that the king wielded over his children. She had no wish to wrangle with Edmund. Not today.

      The king was gazing into the middle distance, his eyes unfocused and empty.

      ‘On what day,’ he asked, ‘and at what hour did Ecbert die?’

      ‘Two days ago,’ Edmund replied. ‘Shrove Tuesday, just before vespers.’

      Æthelred closed his eyes, and the hand that he lifted to his brow trembled. Emma could only guess at what he was feeling. Anguish for the suffering of his son? Anger at a pitiless God? She wanted to comfort him, and she would have reached out to touch his arm, but his next words checked her.

      ‘I beg you, lady, to leave us to our grief. Send my daughters to me. I would tell them of their brother’s death.’

      It was as if he had struck her a physical blow – a terse reminder that she was an outsider, a foreign СКАЧАТЬ