‘I consulted the men who would be the first to die should our enemy attack us from within!’ Æthelred cut him off. ‘The kingdom is safer now that our enemy has been destroyed. I am safer!’
Athelstan stared at his father. How could a king be so blind to the consequences of what he had done?
‘You have not destroyed an enemy, my lord,’ he insisted. ‘You have created one. This act will come back to haunt you. Hundreds are dead at your behest. Pallig is dead, even though you gave him the gold to build his hall and granted him the land on which it stood. His wife, Gunhild, and their small child are dead. Think you that her brother, Swein Forkbeard, the fiercest of all the Danish warriors since Alfred’s time, will not seek vengeance?’
‘If so, then he will do it from outside the kingdom, not from within! I could not allow my enemies to dwell within my very borders, making themselves fat off our lands while they wait for a signal to turn upon us and attack. Wiser men than you have given their blessings to this action. They do not question the judgement of their king.’
‘The Danes living among us had no reason to attack, my lord. Now you have given them one. Mark my words, father, you will regret this unholy act. We will all of us regret it!’
‘Your regrets interest me not!’ the king spat. ‘We are finished here. Hubert!’
The king’s steward stepped into the chamber, bowed to his lord, and stood next to Athelstan, staring at him pointedly.
Frustrated and angered by his father’s resistance to logic, Athelstan slapped his hand on the table, turned, and stalked out of the room.
His father was a fool. He was wealthy, powerful, and blessed by God, yet still he was a fool. He was making decisions that would lead inexorably to disaster. It was like using Greek fire to douse a flame. And Athelstan greatly feared that now that the blaze had truly begun, they would none of them escape it.
Æthelred scowled as Athelstan withdrew from the chamber. His foolish son did not understand. How could he? He had not seen Edward’s wraith, had not been burdened with the foreknowledge of his own doom – had not been forced to take measures to prevent it.
But with this act that his son found so repellant he had triumphed over his enemies and over the vengeance that his dead brother sought to exact from beyond the grave. He had preserved his kingdom and his crown.
And surely he had banished for ever the hideous spectre that so haunted and tormented him.
‘My son chides me, Hubert,’ he said, ‘for defending the kingdom that he will one day inherit. He would pit his youthful wisdom against my experience and knowledge.’
‘He is seventeen, my lord. Consider that when you were seventeen you had been wearing a crown for over seven summers. Perhaps your son believes that he is just as capable as you were then.’
Æthelred frowned. Athelstan was still a whelp. He did not have the experience needed to understand the minds of men.
‘At seventeen I was much older than my years,’ he said. ‘My son, though, has not yet mastered the skills of a leader. He commands his few hearth guards, but he has not been tested.’
‘Yet, my lord, he did you a great service recently, did he not? Intervening when the Dane would have taken your life? Thus, he has shown skill and loyalty. Perhaps such a service should be rewarded with some form of recognition, some visible symbol of your regard for him.’
‘Grant him the Sword of Offa, you mean? Designate him my heir and give him estates to manage?’
‘If my lord Athelstan is taken up with his own responsibilities, he may spend far less time brooding over yours, my king.’
Æthelred rested his chin upon his folded hands and considered the suggestion. It had merit. Certainly his son deserved some recompense for his quick action that day in the minster square. To grant him the Sword of Offa would only confirm what was already commonly accepted – that the eldest ætheling would one day inherit the throne. As for the lands, it was perhaps time to give all three of his eldest sons more latitude in managing the estates they already held. It would keep them occupied and give them needed experience.
‘At the next witan,’ he said to Hubert, ‘we will bestow the sword upon my son and grant him other offices as well. Let him test his decision-making skills on his own men, and we shall see how well he does.’
February 1003
Wherwell Abbey, Hampshire
Emma, wrapped in a warm, sable-lined woollen mantle and attended by Wymarc and Margot, walked slowly along one of the gravel paths of the abbey garden at Wherwell. This was her first venture out of doors for many weeks, and after covering only a short distance, Emma had to admit defeat. She was tired. She was always tired now. Her body, even her mind, was sluggish. Every movement, every thought, took enormous effort, as if her body and her brain fought against a buffeting gale. In the hushed darkness of the abbey chapel she had prayed for relief from this weariness of soul and of limb, but her prayers had gone unanswered.
She was grateful for the ministrations of the good sisters, and for the care that Wymarc and Margot had lavished upon her ever since the night they had found her as the king had left her – bloodied, bruised, and violated. They had tended to her physical hurts until she was well enough to leave Winchester, transported to Wherwell in a curtained litter, her ravaged face hidden behind a dark veil. The physical marks were gone now. Only this soul-numbing lethargy remained, so enervating that she could not remember how long it had been since she had come here. She had arrived well before Christmas, so it must be two months, she reckoned, at least. Time seemed to stand still, here within the abbey walls, but she knew that the little peace she had found here could not last. She could not continue to hide from the world like a frightened child, not least because the king had insisted that she make an appearance at the Easter court – for the sake of policy.
And so, for the sake of policy, she must return to Winchester. That disagreeable duty, however, still lay some weeks ahead of her. Ash Wednesday had come and gone, but Easter was yet weeks away. The garden around her, still winter bare, showed no promise of spring. The time of earth’s renewal hovered in the future like a distant dream.
She came to a bench beneath a tree whose naked branches splayed like skeletal fingers against a blue sky. Shafts of sunlight sifted through the boughs, and Emma sat down and turned her face up to their gentle warmth. She nodded to her companions to join her, and for a few moments they sat in silence, until Emma, turning to Margot, reluctantly picked up the thread of conversation she had abandoned only a little while before.
‘Tell me,’ Emma said, ‘how you can be so certain.’
‘The signs, my lady, are all there,’ Margot said gently. ‘One has but to read them.’
Emma closed her eyes. She had thought that she might be slowly dying of some wasting disease, some insidious enemy that robbed her of strength and would not let her eat. For a time she had even hoped that it might be so. But in the same way that she knew of the existence of the sun even when it was hidden by heavy clouds, she had known the truth of what ailed her: she carried the king’s child within her at last – the fruit of his cruelty and of her humiliation.
Opening her eyes, she looked steadily into Margot’s seamed and worried face.
‘I do not want this child,’ she said in a whisper, searching the old woman’s eyes for understanding. ‘I fear that I will hate it, that every time I see it I will remember how it was begotten.’ There