These were men who made their living by murder and rape, men who had been baptized to Christ but whose souls still belonged to heathen gods, or so she had heard. Their grim, weather-scarred faces had haunted her dreams that night, and like her brothers, she wished that Forkbeard and his shipmen had never come to Fécamp. Today, though, the palace was emptied of Danes.
‘The shipmen have gone to the harbour to inspect their vessels for storm damage. They will likely not return until dark. I will be back long before that, and I promise I will keep you company then until we put out the candles.’ With that she slipped from the room before Mathilde could think of any other objections.
The courtyard was deserted as she made her way towards the stables, and the air was so frigid that it hurt to breathe. She followed the wall, grasping at its stones with one hand as she navigated the slippery mud and slush that had been churned up by men and horses. Emma’s snow-white mare, Ange, whickered a greeting, and Emma nuzzled the horse’s neck, warming her face against its thick winter coat. A moment later, though, she heard a commotion in the stable yard that worried her.
Could the men have returned so soon? Surely not all of them. They would have made a great deal more clamour.
Using Ange as a screen, Emma peered towards the wide doorway and saw Richard and Swein Forkbeard leading their mounts towards the stable. She had always thought her brother quite tall, but the Danish king bested him by half a head. They were the same age – both of them very old by her reckoning, for Richard had been born more than twenty years before Emma. But the king of the Danes, with his white hair and long white beard, worn forked and braided, looked far older. There was a sternness about Swein Forkbeard’s countenance, a hard-eyed ruthlessness that frightened her. He even frightened Richard, she was certain, although he masked it with courtesy.
She had no wish to greet the Danish king again, or to face her brother’s wrath at finding her here, so she shied behind her horse to wait for them to go away. They seemed in no hurry, in spite of the cold. Richard, in halting Danish, was relating the pedigree of the king’s mount and doing his best to explain what he looked for in breeding his horse stock.
She smiled at her brother’s clumsy efforts with Swein’s tongue. Like all of the Duchess Gunnora’s children, he had learned Danish at his mother’s knee. And like most of his siblings, he had abandoned it at an early age. Emma had been the only one to embrace it, and she could speak as fluently in Danish as she could in Frankish or Breton or Latin. She had even learned some of the English used by prelates who sometimes visited her brother from across the Narrow Sea.
Neither Richard nor her brother Robert, the archbishop, knew of Emma’s gift of tongues, as her mother called it. Gunnora had advised Emma to keep this remarkable skill a secret. Use it to listen, she had said, rather than to speak. You will be surprised at what you will learn.
Emma listened now and realized, with a start, that the conversation between her brother and the Danish king had moved from the breeding of horses to the breeding of children.
‘A marriage alliance would be in both our interests,’ Swein Forkbeard said. ‘I have two sons who need wives. One of your sisters might do, and you would gain much from such a marriage, I promise you. Of course, were you to reject it, you could lose a great deal.’ There was silence for a moment, and then the king said, his voice speculative, taunting, ‘How much, I wonder, are you prepared to lose?’
Emma covered her mouth with her hand, shocked by the clear threat in Forkbeard’s words. What would he do? Send shipmen to ravage Normandy unless Richard sent one of his sisters to Denmark to wed one of Forkbeard’s sons?
She held her breath, waiting for Richard’s reply.
‘My sisters are overly young to wed.’ Her brother’s fumbled words were so casual that Emma wondered if he had understood all that the Danish king had said.
‘Age matters little,’ Forkbeard replied, his tone amiable now. ‘My youngest son has seen only ten winters, but like his elder brother, he is already a skilled shipman and warrior. As for your sisters,’ he paused, and Emma twisted her fingers nervously in Ange’s mane as she waited for him to go on, ‘you must not be too tender in your care of them. The Lady Emma seems ripe for bedding. You would do well to breed her now, for a good price, or you might find that you have left it too late.’
Emma felt the blood rise to her face, humiliation and anger warring with shock and fear. Surely Richard would not agree to sell her to Denmark! It was a harsh, brutal place, barely Christian. Her family could trace their bloodline back to the northern lands, but that was in the past. Surely it was not part of their future. Denmark was a land of fierce men ruled by a ruthless king. Swein Forkbeard had not inherited his crown but had won it in a battle to the death waged against his own father. Richard could not allow her to marry into a family such as that!
Her blood pounded in her ears, and she had to strain to hear her brother’s response to Forkbeard’s words.
‘Your proposal does my family great honour,’ Richard said. ‘You will understand, of course,’ he went on, his voice smoothly persuasive in spite of his broken Danish, ‘that a betrothal is too delicate a matter to be settled quickly. There are many things to consider and to weigh, and as you know, I have two sisters. You have yet to meet the elder, who, by tradition, should naturally be the first to wed.’
She did not hear the Danish king’s reply, for the men’s voices faded, replaced by the clink of bridles as grooms led the horses to their stalls. Emma remained rooted to the spot where she stood, her face buried in Ange’s neck, her thoughts in turmoil over what she had heard.
Swein Forkbeard’s proposal must carry great weight with her brother. Richard was a realist. He would consider the sacrifice of a younger sister a small price to pay for Norman peace with Denmark. It would be terrible for the bride, though – banished to a hostile, distant land. Mathilde would hate it, even as Emma would. She felt her throat constrict at the very thought of it.
No, her brother could not do such a thing to either of his sisters. He would not send them so far away. He had wed their elder sisters to great lords in Brittany and Frankia, securing his borders and adding considerably to his treasure. Surely he would use Mathilde and herself in a similar manner, for Normandy’s border was long and Richard had need of allies.
But Richard was ambitious. A royal marriage, even to a son of the barbarous Swein Forkbeard, would enhance her brother’s prestige throughout Europe. Forkbeard may be a Viking warlord rather than a godly Christian king, but all of Europe feared him, and that made him a valuable ally. She could easily imagine Richard succumbing to that argument, and she feared what he might be plotting with the Danish king in his private chamber.
She whispered a few endearments into Ange’s ear, then, afraid that Forkbeard’s men might arrive hard upon his heels, she hurried back towards the palace. She would say nothing of what she had heard to Mathilde. Their mother, surely, would have some say in the matter, yet Emma was frightened for her elder sister.
A slender needle of anxiety began to prick her insides. She did not trust Richard.
25th December 1001
Rochester, Kent
In England that December the fierce snowstorm blinded and buried countless travellers caught on the high chalk downs of Wessex, even within a few short steps of shelter. Near Durham in Northumbria the snow piled so high