The Emma of Normandy 2-book Collection: Shadow on the Crown and The Price of Blood. Patricia Bracewell

it. He tried again to shut his eyes, but he could only stare into Edward’s bloodied face, until at last the shadow slowly receded and the chamber glowed with light and warmth again.

      Freed at last from his brother’s grasp, he sank to the bed and wept.

      Emma stood transfixed, her eyes flicking between her weeping lord and the red stain on the wall where the cup had shattered. How many eternities, she wondered, had passed while she stood here, bewildered and aghast, watching as the king struggled against some invisible threat that drove him past distraction into madness?

      She began to breathe again as she realized that whatever had held him in thrall seemed to have set him free now, for even the king’s weeping had ceased. Yet she made no move to go to him. The memory of his petty cruelty was too fresh in her mind, and she could not be sure that he would not turn his rage upon her. So she stood, immobile, uncertain what to do.

      ‘I am cold,’ he whispered.

      The words held a plea that she could not ignore, pulling her from her trance. She snatched up her robe and went to him, wrapping the thick fur and wool about his shoulders.

      ‘My lord, I fear you are ill,’ she said. His face was white and waxen, like a candle melted in the sun.

      ‘Burn it,’ he whispered.

      She frowned. Burn what? She glanced at the parchments tumbled around him on the bed.

      ‘The scroll,’ he said, gesturing to something on the floor nearby. ‘Burn it!’

      She spotted it then, a scrap the size of her finger. Was this the cause of his madness? Could so small a thing scatter the wits of a king? She picked it up, sorely tempted to unroll and read it first, but Æthelred was watching her with eyes sharp as blue steel. Obediently, she fed the scroll to the lamp’s flame.

      ‘What is it?’ she asked.

      ‘No business of yours. Just do what you’re told, damn you,’ he said, his words slurred from the wine.

      She watched it burn, aware that it might hold the key to the puzzle that was Æthelred of England, and it was with a bitter pang of frustration that she dropped the last bit into the lamp and watched it curl to ash.

      She heard him heave a great sigh, and she turned to look at him. Some colour had returned to his face, but the weariness had not left it. He looked sick and haggard, with dark crescents beneath his eyes. He was a man who slept but little, she knew, and not for the first time she wondered what dark dreams troubled his rest. Now she watched him slough off her robe and rise to his feet, but slowly, as if he were still burdened with a great weight.

      ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, his voice leaden, ‘you will deliver to me the letter for your brother, and you will begin preparations for your journey to Exeter.’

      He left her then, his gait slow and heavy, while she stood in stunned silence, her ear attuned to the sound of his retreating footsteps.

      When she was certain he was gone she went, trembling, to her great chair and sat down, steepling her hands in front of her as she considered what had just occurred. She knew little of men, for she had ever dwelt in a world of women. But she was beginning to know this hard and brutal man who was her husband and her king. And the more she knew him, the more she feared him.

      Yet surely her fears were as nothing beside his. Æthelred, it seemed to her, feared everyone. That he mistrusted her did not surprise her. She was a foreigner, and in spite of her marriage vows, he could not be certain of her allegiance until she bore him a son, and perhaps not even then. She understood this. But Æthelred mistrusted and feared his counsellors, and even his own sons. He perceived Athelstan, in particular, as a dangerous rival and a threat. Had there been some warning about Athelstan in the missive that she had burned? She could not believe it. Athelstan had a pure heart, and God knew, there were any number of enemies who might threaten a king.

      Must every ruler keep himself so separate from those around him, even those whom he should be able to trust? Or was there something in Æthelred’s very being that set him apart? It seemed to her that there was some fissure in this king’s soul from which suspicion rose like a malevolent cloud, working on him like a poison – and it was well-known that when a king waxed ill the entire realm suffered.

      Like a cold fog, the stories she had heard about the death of Æthelred’s brother crept unbidden into her mind. A king had been murdered, and since that death England had been cursed with ill fortune. If Æthelred bore the blame, guilty or not, for the death of that king – and thus for the troubles that threatened the land – how many enemies he must have! And because she was bound to him body and soul, her fate wrapped within his, they were her enemies too, for all the years of her life.

      She covered her face with her hands, and it seemed to her that the king’s own fear still blanketed the room, and that its essence settled upon her like a suffocating mist.

      The final details for the queen’s removal to Exeter were all but completed. On the morning before her departure the ladies of Emma’s household sorted feverishly through her wardrobe, debating among themselves which items would be necessary for the journey. Emma, seated nearby at her work-table, was absorbed by a map that Father Martin had found for her, its surface smooth beneath her fingers. Far older than she was, it had been commissioned by King Alfred over a hundred years before to show the royal holdings in Wessex. With her index finger she traced a line from Winchester to Exeter, wondering at the distance that she must cover in the next few weeks. Her finger paused, though, when she spotted the royal manor of Corfe marked near the southern coast. Corfe – where Æthelred’s brother, King Edward, had met his death.