That evening Emma prepared herself for a visit from the king, but to her surprise and relief, he did not come. Instead, he sent word that the court would move to London within the week, and that she must prepare for the journey. It was a command, she knew, yet she did not see how she could obey it. She sent word to Æthelred that she did not yet feel strong enough to make such an arduous journey and begged to be allowed to remain in Winchester. Then she waited in an agony of suspense for his response. She had couched it as a request, but how Æthelred would interpret it would depend upon his mood at the time.
His response, when it came, was scrawled on a wax tablet. She had to study it for some time before she could decipher it.
I will grant this request, but push me no further. For too long have you neglected the duties owed to your king. My patience is nearly at an end.
So she had bought herself a little time – perhaps a month, but no more. She must content herself with that.
Almost as soon as the king and his court departed, the spring weather turned from sunshine to grim, unrelenting rain. Under its spell the mood in the queen’s apartments became as sombre and listless as Emma herself, and she could not rouse herself to change it. Elgiva, apparently irritated that the king had left her behind, was sullen and ill-tempered, using her tongue to lash anyone who crossed her. Servants whispered of a malignant spirit that had cursed the queen and so caused the death of her unborn child. Alarmed by the rumours, Wymarc insisted that Emma wear every piece of amber jewellery that she owned, for amber was a talisman against evil. Margot, too, sought to break the spell that held the queen, placing rosemary under Emma’s pillow to give her pleasant dreams. Yet the shadow of hopelessness that seemed to enfold Emma like a shroud refused to lift.
In the end it was young Edward who drew Emma from her despair. An ague had kept him from accompanying his father to London, and a week or so after the king’s departure, the boy’s condition worsened. Emma ordered a servant to carry Edward into her own chamber, where she and Margot could tend him, and suddenly her days had a purpose and a meaning. Hour after hour she sat at Edward’s bedside, placing cool cloths upon his fevered skin, coaxing spoonfuls of Margot’s willow bark infusion past his chapped lips, lulling the restless boy to sleep with stories of Normandy. But Edward’s condition did not improve, and Emma’s heart ached at his suffering. She sent a messenger to London, advising the king that Edward’s illness was grave; then she waited, daily anticipating Æthelred’s return.
It was late one May evening that a royal party arrived within the palace grounds. The king, Emma surmised, had come at last. She glanced towards the shadowy corner where Margot, who would keep the long night watch, sat dozing. All of her other attendants were abed, and she saw no reason to summon them. The king’s staff would see to his immediate needs, and it may be some time yet before he came to find his son.
Edward lay shirtless beneath the bed linens, and Emma repeatedly bathed his face and upper body with cool water in an effort to banish the fever that held him in restless dreams. His hair had been cut short so they could tend him more easily, and he looked far younger than his eleven summers. He moaned in his sleep, and as Emma took his hot hand in hers, a servant slipped into the room to whisper that Lord Athelstan was asking to see his brother.
She started at this, but in a moment her heart lifted, as if some great weight she had been carrying had suddenly slipped away. She bade the servant escort the ætheling into the chamber, then she tried to ignore the trembling of her limbs as she waited for him in the near darkness. There were a thousand things that she longed to say to Athelstan. Every day the pile of words that remained unspoken between them grew higher and broader. Yet the words she would speak were utterly forbidden, and so she must remain forever mute. Just to have him near, though, would be some consolation.
She rose as he entered the room, and in the dim candlelight she drank in the sight of him – the thatch of bright hair, the startlingly dark eyebrows, the wide mouth, the beard the colour of raw honey, the solemn blue eyes.
He paused in front of her, and as their glances met she read there the same gravity – cold and distant – with which he had greeted her ever since her return to court. It chilled her like a winter wind.
He gestured for her to sit and, drawing a stool next to her chair, took his place beside her.
‘My father received your message but matters keep him in London, and he sent me to learn how Edward is faring.’ Awkwardly, he touched Edward’s cheek with the back of his hand. ‘Jesu, he is so hot.’
‘I am frightened for him,’ she whispered, studying Edward’s face, as she had for days, looking for some sign of improvement. She did not find it. Flushed with fever, his nose thin and pinched with lack of nourishment, he barely resembled the brown-faced boy who had ridden with them along the Itchen the summer before. ‘My sister suffered from agues all her life, but I cannot remember that she was ever as sick as this. Edward complains of pains in his arms and legs, and of a scalding in his throat. Nothing we do eases him.’
She glanced at Athelstan and saw a shadow cross his face. Her words had alerted him to his brother’s danger, and it pained her to be the one to deliver such evil tidings. Yet it was better that he know now what may have to be faced all too soon.
‘My father,’ he said, his eyes still on the boy, ‘has asked the bishop and all the clergy in London to offer prayers for his recovery. Do you hear that, Edward? All of London is praying for you now.’
She, too, had prayed for Edward, but her prayers had sprung from a bitter heart, and God had not answered her.
‘Perhaps God will listen to them,’ she said. ‘He has not listened to me.’ The rage that had lain coiled within her, suppressed in silence and in bitter tears, sprang suddenly to life. ‘Why is God so cruel?’ she demanded, fisting her hands and beating them impotently against her knees. She longed to weep, but she would not give God the satisfaction. ‘Why does He punish innocent children for the sins of others?’
Athelstan heard the despair in her voice, and it smote his heart. She was his father’s wife, and for that reason he had schooled himself to look upon her with a stern regard that showed neither pity nor compassion. He could not do so now. Her anguished eyes, bruised with weariness, were fixed upon Edward, but he guessed that she must be thinking as well of the babe that she had lost. If God was cruel, then Emma was as much a victim of His cruelty as poor Edward. She had lost her own child, and now she lived in fear of losing a son that she had embraced as her own.
He searched for words that would give her consolation, but what did he know of the mind of God? He was a warrior, not a priest. His duty was to fight, and it was up to the priests to sort things out with the Lord. Yet how was anyone to fight and win against the will of the Almighty? How was one even to recognize God’s hand at work in the world when there was so much darkness and misery?
Emma, though, needed consolation, however clumsy it might be.
‘We are God’s instruments for vengeance or for mercy, are we not?’ he asked gently. ‘So if you would look for the hand of God in Edward’s illness,’ he took hold of her hand, and held it before her, ‘look to the hands that have given him relief from pain and have tended him with a mother’s care.’
It did not content her, though. She shook her head, drew her hand from his, and gently ministered again to Edward. His brother’s thin face was no longer flushed but eerily pale now in the flickering light.
What if Edward should die? He had never thought much about death, in spite of the hundreds of sermons he had heard detailing man’s ultimate fate in the most harrowing terms. Even now he could not reconcile himself to the prospect of a world without Edward, for he was but a boy. It seemed impossible that he should die. Yet children, even the children of kings, did die. His own father was the only one of three brothers to survive to manhood.
Unbidden, the words of the seeress at Warwick sprang into his mind. She had predicted that he would not inherit his father’s kingdom. He could not fathom such an outcome – unless he were to die before his father did. Was that what she had been