The Price of Blood. Patricia Bracewell

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СКАЧАТЬ learned that a messenger had arrived bearing missives from the king to her ealdorman father, she did not wait for a summons to the hall to hear the news. Such a summons, she knew, might never come. Her father liked to flaunt his power by being niggardly with information.

      So, with a servant girl at her back bearing a cup and a flagon of mead strong enough to loosen even a giant’s tongue, she entered the great hall, where her father had been meeting men from his various estates. Reeves, grooms, armourers, huntsmen, and their underlings – perhaps a score of men all told – stood in groups about the chamber waiting for an interview with their lord.

      Whenever her father was in residence the hall was peopled almost exclusively with such men, and he would not suffer her to stay among them for long. Since she had returned here from her cousin’s nuptials, he had kept her mewed up, out of the sight of these fellows in case someone should look at her with covetous glances.

      In his zealous regard for her chastity her father seemed to have forgotten that once, hoping to gain greater influence over Æthelred, he had turned a blind eye while she had been the king’s leman for near a year. No doubt he had expected, as she had, that the king would set aside his Norman bride and wed her. But Emma and the bishops had persuaded the king that his queen could not be easily disposed of and, to Elgiva’s father’s fury and her frustration, the king’s ardour towards her had cooled and she had gained nothing from the dalliance but a few golden trinkets.

      Since then Æthelred had shared his bed with an assortment of favourites whose kin were far less prominent than her own, while she was kept like a caged bird under the queen’s watchful eye. And now, even worse, she was spending her days and nights here, fettered by her father’s far too rigorous protection.

      As she made her way through the crowded chamber she searched for her father and found him standing in a narrow beam of sunlight that spilled through one of the hall’s high, glazed windows. She tried to gauge his mood from the expression on his face, but it told her nothing. Like his temper, his countenance was ever cold, dangerous, stone-hard, and grim. He was a fearful man to look upon – his face seamed and roughhewn, as if it had been carved from rock that had been cracked and broken. His black hair, coarser than hers but just as thick and curly, was shot through with skeins of white, and the once-black beard was mottled with grey. He was not a gentle man, as likely to greet her with a cuff as with a kiss, although he would welcome the honey wine readily enough.

      She took the brimming cup from the servant and, walking boldly forward, she offered it to him.

      ‘Good day, my lord,’ she said, casting a slantwise, inquisitive glance at the parchment in his hand that bore the king’s seal.

      Her father took the cup, drank deeply, fixed her with a steady gaze, and said – nothing.

      She waited, silently cursing him for this little show of power over her. He knew what she wanted, yet it amused him to make her wait upon his pleasure.

      He drank again, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and waved the parchment at her.

      ‘I suppose, daughter,’ he said, ‘that you wish to learn what news the king has sent me, eh?’ He bent towards her with a sneer. ‘Trust me, lady, it is of no consequence to you.’ He tossed back the rest of the mead and held out the cup to the servant for more.

      Elgiva winced. She had brought the mead to loosen his tongue, not addle his wits. Her father was difficult to deal with when he was sober. He was impossible when he was drunk.

      ‘Yet it is news,’ she said, careful to keep her voice mild despite the seething anger his bullying always sparked in her. ‘I would be glad to hear it.’ She smiled at him, but he responded with his usual scowl.

      ‘The king’s second son has died,’ he said, carelessly tossing the parchment to the floor.

      She stared at him, willing his bald statement to be a lie even as it echoed in her head. She had thought to wed an ætheling – either Athelstan or Ecbert – for it had been foretold to her that she would one day be queen. How else could that come about if not by an alliance with either the king or one of his sons? But the king, tied as he was to his whey-faced queen and her half-Norman brat, had gone beyond her reach. And now, if her father spoke true, Ecbert, too, had been taken from her.

      ‘I don’t believe, it,’ she whispered. ‘He was well enough at Christmas. What happened to him?’

      ‘The missive does not say.’ He shrugged. ‘The king has sons enough. He’ll not miss this one overmuch.’

      ‘Even so, it will mean a dismal feasting at the Easter court.’ Still, Athelstan would be there and would perhaps need consolation in the wake of his brother’s death.

      ‘That, too, is of little consequence to you,’ her father replied, ‘for neither you nor I will be attending the feast at Cookham, although it seems the king desires our company. We must disappoint him, I fear, but I will send your brothers in my place.’

      He had surprised her again. To ignore the king’s summons to the Easter council was likely to raise suspicions in Æthelred’s already suspicious mind. Why do such a thing?

      ‘My brothers can hardly take your place, my lord,’ she said smoothly, ‘as you are his most prominent ealdorman, and their counsel can hardly measure up to yours. Besides, why should we not attend the gathering? The queen will have been looking for me to return to her household for some weeks now, and by—’

      ‘Are you so eager to return to your royal keepers?’ he snapped. ‘Now that I’ve prised you from the court, I see no good reason to take you back there again. You are my property, Elgiva, not the king’s, and I’ll not have my plans for you disrupted because Æthelred decides to take you into his bed again or to marry you off behind my back.’

      ‘What plans?’ she demanded. This was what she had feared for some weeks – that he had kept her here because he intended to put her to some use that suited his purpose, without caring in the least what she might want.

      ‘You will learn that when the time is right,’ he said. ‘Until then I will keep you close by my side because I have learned that I cannot trust anyone else to watch over you.’

      She glared at him, and he glared back at her, confident, she supposed, that he had kept her blind and deaf, as helpless as a newborn kitten. But he was wrong about that, for she knew more about his affairs than he imagined.

      ‘I am aware of your frequent dealings with northerners, my lord,’ she hissed, ‘and I’ve heard that even men from across the Danish sea have been in this—’

      In an instant he had slammed down his cup and grasped her arm with all the strength of a man well used to wielding a sword. She found herself thrust into a corner out of sight and hearing of the men in the hall.

      ‘If you cannot watch your tongue, girl, I shall cut it out for you,’ he snarled. ‘And while you’re about it, keep that inquisitive little nose of yours out of my business. I promise you, I look forward to the day when I hand you off to your husband and you become someone else’s problem.’

      ‘And that day would be when?’ she spat at him. ‘Soon, I think, for I am twenty summers old and you must use me before I am too old to be considered a prize for any man!’

      ‘You are no prize now, sullied as you are by the king’s lust.’ He gave her a shake, and then, to her astonishment, he grinned. ‘But have no fear, daughter,’ he said jovially, his words slurred and СКАЧАТЬ