The Forever Queen

by Helen Hollick

  With pride open on his bearded face, the mason pointed to the red-tiled roof. “The tiles are all laid, most of the construction finished. The chimneys I am especially pleased with.”

  With curiosity, Cnut strolled over to one of the two high-reaching stone stacks that protruded from the outer long wall, patted its solidity. They were firm structures of mortared block stone, stretching up, square and solid, towards the sky. A new conception, one totally alien to Cnut, who doubted their usefulness. He shrugged, held his counsel until he had chance to inspect them more thoroughly.

  Emma was already entering through the doorway, the inside smelt of sawdust and chiselled stone, of tarred rope and slopped water, of toil and sweat. The walls were bare, the floor dusty with a weird, patterned dance of interwoven footsteps. Swept, tidied, with embroidered tapestries and furs on the walls, benches and tables, fresh rushes, flickering lamps, and tallow candles, it would soon be transformed into a living place where a heart did beat and a voice did speak. At the far end a staircase, the wood new, pale, and unscuffed. Gathering her gown she climbed, pushed open the doorway at the top, and entered what would become her solar, her private sitting room. Her breath came in a gasp, held in her throat, and tears of excited joy prickled behind her eyes. The room, although devoid of any homeliness, was flooded with light from the three small-paned glass windows. Crude glass, thick and not very opaque, but windows were not for looking through, only for keeping out the elements and letting in the light. Glass was so much better than thin sheets of stiff, oiled parchment. Wooden shutters, folded back to each side, would shut out the night and the worst storms.

  Cnut strolled across to the chimney—the second would be in the chamber beyond. He stepped inside the huge, cold, and empty hearth and peered upwards into the square of sky above. Personally, he could not see the point. If the hearth-place was not central to the room, how could you sit around it to talk, or laugh, or argue?

  “How much rain and wind will sweep downwards?” he asked the mason. “Given some of our English downpours, I should think a fire would be washed away before it throws out any heat.”

  Emma saved the man from embarrassment by answering for him. “I am assuming work on them is not quite finished, my lover, hence the scaffolding and our master mason being grieved at the distraction from his task.” She moved across the room to peer up the shaft herself, shuddered at the height that felt as if it were about to fall down upon her. “Are tiles not placed at specific angles across the sky hole to channel away the rain but allow the escape of smoke?”

  The mason smiled, could not have put it better himself. Even so, Cnut was eventually proved right; there was often no sufficient draught to draw the smoke upwards, and on days when the wind blew particularly malevolently, more of it tended to blow into the room than drift up. But then what hall was never smoke-filled?

  From the solar, a second room—Emma’s bedchamber, with a private chapel on one corner and on the far end an oak door leading to a small, windowless room. Cnut peeped in, nodded satisfaction. This was for the holding of the treasury, the chests of valuables he owned; a sensible way of doing things, for a King must be ready to face his enemies at any time and not have need to pause for the securing of his wealth. The fact that a Queen was responsible for its keeping was the source of her power, of course. Cnut wondered what would happen if one day, after he had been away—fighting in Denmark, for instance—Emma should refuse to give it back. The anomaly had never arisen before. There had been a Queen, Alfred’s daughter, who had held the treasury of Mercia and ruled in her own name, but then that had been during the war years when the Danes and the English had first been at each other’s throats. Her own brother had soon put a stop to a woman’s bid for ultimate power. Since then, the only capable women had been Æthelred’s dominating mother and Emma. What would Emma do if she had sole control of the treasury? Cnut had an uncomfortable feeling she would become as formidable as a fire-breathing, gold-guarding dragon creature.

  Finished with his squinting into the darkness, he asked, “I assume the floor is solid? Chests weigh heavy.”

  Emma entered the windowless room, jumped up and down, her outdoor boots thudding on the timber floor. “The floor is oak, double-planked, on sturdy beams.”

  “And, of course, your great weight is ten times that of my gold.”

  They laughed together, Cnut sliding his arm around Emma’s slender waist, for she was still slender, despite having given birth to four children. He bent his head, put his lips to hers, enjoying the taste of her mouth against his. “It will be good,” he said, “when you have a bed in your chamber and the master mason has the sense to turn his sour gaze in the opposite direction.”

  Giggling, Emma put her hand to his chest, pushing him slightly away. “Then I suggest we leave him to his work. The quicker he is finished, the quicker I can see about furnishings and making this into a home we can enjoy.”

  It seemed an ideal opportunity. “I am pleased your house is almost ready for you. Its finishing will give you amusement while I am gone.” Cnut realised, as he said it, perhaps the opportunity was not as ideal as he had imagined.

  Hurt, annoyed that her happiness had been so easily and abruptly shattered, Emma walked away from him, went to one of the windows, stared out. From this side of the chamber the view was down into the crowded High Street. She watched a woman drop her basket, bundles of wool, skeins of thread, and packets of needles and thimbles cascading to the floor. No one stopped to help her retrieve anything, everyone stepping over the muddle, leaving the distraught woman to sort everything for herself. As Cnut wanted to leave her.

  “I see,” she said tartly. “Where will you be going? For how long?” If he said to the North, she would scream, hit him. Oh, she knew all about Ælfgifu! All about the letters and messages she constantly bombarded him with. Knew about the occasional letter Cnut sent as reply.

  Cnut came to stand behind her, set his hands on either shoulder. “I go to Denmark, where else?”

  Not to the Northampton Bitch, then. Could she believe him?

  “I have no intention of allowing my brother to yoke more men to his command and to try again for what I will not let him have. It is in my mind to anchor him to harbour before he plucks courage to set sail again.”

  Emma could see the sense of it, but seeing sense never made the doing any easier. “When do you leave?” she asked curtly, not wanting to know the answer.

  “After Easter. Mid-April. I intend to announce I am sailing north to deal with the unrest on my borders with Scotland. Erik has asked for my help. My brother shall not expect me to turn east, after, towards Denmark.” He slid his hands lower, holding her to him, folding them beneath her breasts, resting his chin on her head.

  “Will you take care of England for me while I am gone?” he asked, trundling her around and, ignoring the presence of the mason, kissing her with a passion of trust and need.

  He did not tell her he would also be visiting Northampton on his way. There were one or two things he had to settle there. Nor did he tell his Queen that while he trusted her, he did not feel it right to leave a woman in charge of his crown or his kingdom without male guidance. Thorkell, Earl of East Anglia, was to be his official regent.

  13

  December 1019—Winchester

  The Christmas court was held at Winchester, and the hope had been that Cnut himself would have returned from Denmark and been here for it, but the Nativity had come and gone, and only three days were wanting for yet another old year to turn around into the new.

  Thorkell held the court at Cnut’s palace while, heavy with child, Emma preferred to reside in her own house at the west end of High Street. The year had been long for her, on occasion lonely, but for the most part interesting and eventful. This was the year, above all previous, when Emma felt her worth as Queen. Cnut may have charged that contemptible man, Thorkell, with the title “regent,” to be the first to witness charters and make final judgement, but Emma held the reins,
decided which road to follow. And she did it while swelling with child and through the birthing of a son.

  He was born in late December during a wind-blustering night of a tempest that rattled at the doors and moaned through the eaves. Born with ease and happiness, even though Emma was in her one and thirtieth year, and no longer a young girl with a supple and pliant body.

  Harthacnut, a legitimate son for England, a red-faced, angry, little man, demanding absolute attention. How hard it was, looking down at him as he suckled her breast, for Emma to forget the two potential rivals, the sons residing in Northampton with their bitch of a mother. Easy, by comparison, to forget the other two, the ones exiled in Normandy.

  The Northampton Bitch, as Emma insisted on calling Ælfgifu, had steadily become a problem during Cnut’s absence, growing almost in unison with the pregnancy. Cnut had taken a risk to leave England so early in his sovereignty, but it had been a risk weighed against the prospect of a second invasion from his brother. That possibility Cnut was determined to erase before he could turn to other, English, matters.

  “She wants a crown for her own son, doesn’t she, my skat,” Emma whispered, using the Danish endearment, as she moved the babe to her other breast. “But it is not his, it is yours.” The child gazed up at her with unfocused blue eyes, his mouth drawing greedily at the essential first days of his mother’s milk.

  “He will be one with his own mind, that lad,” Leofgifu said in passing as she cleared away the debris of the babe’s soiled linen. “There’ll be no arguing with him when he’s grown to manhood.”

  “Then I trust the Whore of Northampton learns of it and ensures her two brats remember their place.”

  “Aye, she’s one with a grudge, that woman.” Leofgifu took the sated child, winded him. Placing him in his cot, added, “Do you think there be any truth in this rumour of Thurbrand? Is it likely she was behind his murder?”

  Emma laughed. “What? Murdered so soon after he had denounced her as a cast-off whore? No, of course she had nothing to do with it!”

  It was known that the two had quarrelled, but uncertain whether Ælfgifu had been involved in the killing, which had been done by Uhtred of Northumbria’s son in revenge for his father’s murder. Ælfgifu would never work alongside that young man, but Emma had no intention of dampening tattled gossip with opposing fact.

  With the wind knocking at the shuttered windows, moaning down the chimney, and creaking at the rafters, all sound beyond this, Emma’s small private world, was muffled. The hammering at the outer door to the solar startled both women and the child, who jerked, arms thrown above his head, but slept on. Stumping across the bedchamber and through the far room, like a dragon ship under full sail, Leofgifu hauled the door open, prepared to unleash her displeasure at the interruption, her scorn rising to a scream before one word had left her lips.

  Armed men rushed in, knocking Leofgifu aside as she tried to bar entry. She fell heavily, her head hitting the edge of a table; she lay still, blood dribbling from her skull. Their leader crossed to the bedchamber, kicking the two barking and snarling dogs aside.

  “I am grateful that you have come to give honour to your Lord King’s new son, Lord Athelweard,” Emma said, deceptively calm, to the man standing, legs apart, sword drawn, in the open doorway, “but perhaps this is not the most appropriate of moments? As you see, he is but a few hours old, and I am not from childbed.”

  The man made no move to leave or to rebuke his handful of men who were ransacking the solar for things of value. Athelweard, who had married the only daughter of a minor Ealdorman of western Wessex, had fancied for himself the inheritance of his father-in-law’s title, but had been disappointed by Cnut’s lack of sharing the same aspiration. Athelweard. So Emma’s spies had been right; he was one of the dissenters who hoped that Cnut would not be coming home.

  “I have taken control of Winchester,” he announced gruffly. “The crown is mine, as is the treasury. I wish to take it. Now.”

  Had it not been for the dour seriousness of his expression and the gleam of the blade in his hand, Emma would have burst into laughter. “You want the crown?” she echoed, incredulous. “Has my Lord Thorkell not uttered some word of objection to that? After all, I believe he is anxious to try its fit as soon as he finds the courage.” There was no proof for the statement, only suspicion, but strong suspicion, fuelled by well-whispered rumour.

  “Thorkell cannot leave the palace,” Athelweard answered, his speech slurred. He was drunk, then. All the easier to deal with. “My men hold him captive.”

  “Your men? You have an army?”

  “I have half of Wessex with me,” Athelweard boasted. “Cnut ought not have denied me my rights.”

  “Only half of Wessex? Not the whole? Did the more important half, Godwine’s, not like the idea of following your stupidity, then?”

  Athelweard growled, waved his sword in her direction, his balance slightly top heavy.

  Emma gathered a mantle to her shoulders, for the draught was intense with the outer door open. Where were her men? Those who ought be in the hall below? Was her daughter, in the children’s quarters, safe? “The King did not slight you; he is waiting to offer you something greater when opportunity arises.” She might as well attempt bluffing while deciding what to do.

  “Bull’s shit.”

  “If you think so.”

  “I think so.” Athelweard’s eyes flickered to the bolted door at the far end of the room. “I want the treasury.”

  Emma waved her hand towards it. “Then take it; there is nothing I can do to stop you.” Where are my guards? My servants? My housecarls? Oh God, what if Leofgifu is hurt…what if they harm my son?

  Apart from the persistence of the wind, its determination to gain entry as forcibly as this rabble, and the banging of a door somewhere, the hall below was ominously quiet. Were they all dead? Why had she heard nothing? Huh, of course! Ale barrels had been taken around the town this evening for Winchester to celebrate the birth of her son. How many of her household were lying drunk in the streets? Athelweard had been at this winter council since the first week of December, clever of him to use the distraction of this given opportunity. He must have spent many hours convincing men to join him when chance presented itself, except Emma would never have credited the man to have been so cunning. If she had, she would have had him more closely watched.

  Shouting suddenly from the courtyard, the sound of fighting.

  Athelweard ran for the door, his men ahead of him. Emma slid from the bed, stiff and sore—for all the ease of its coming, a babe leaves its mark on a woman’s body during its birthing. The room was reeling, but she reached her son, lifted him from the cradle, waking him from sleep into shuddering wails of protest.

  Slamming the outer door, Athelweard shouted for it to be barred, looked frantically for another route to leave by. The windows were small, not wide enough for a man to crawl through. Footsteps on the stairs, hammering on the door, a man desperately shouting Emma’s name.

  Leofstan! Oh, thank God, Emma thought, holding Harthacnut closer, jiggling him to attempt to quiet his distress.

  Stunned, dizzy, and disorientated, Leofgifu sat up, her face already bruising blue-black, blood matted into her hair. On her knees, she crawled across the floor, valiantly tried to stand, to shield her mistress and the boy.

  The door was quivering, the wood splitting as an axe broke through, a face, angry, anxious, on the other side. Again the axe thundered down, the door shattered, and Leofstan crashed into the room, rolling as he hit the floor and coming instantly to his feet. One of the men, hurrying forward to meet him, met instead with that axe. Leofgifu screamed as, shouldering her aside, Athelweard grabbed at Emma and the child, hauling her like a shield in front of him, his sword blade at her throat.

  “Come one step closer, soldier, and I will kill them both!”

  Leofstan halted, stood half bent, the axe haft across his hands. “Hurt the Queen or her son,” he breathed, eyes narrowed, talk
ing low, “and you will regret the day the whore who spawned you ever spread her legs for the runt who sired you.”

  Three more of Leofstan’s men were coming through the door, their eyes locking with the scum who were standing, uncertain, looking from their master to the Queen, to Leofstan. One let his sword drop to the floor, the others followed his example.

  “Sensible, your men,” Leofstan said, his voice growling with menace. “Let her go.”

  Athelweard’s arm tightened, the blade biting into her throat. Emma was barefoot, her chemise thin, the mantle only of light wool. Was her shivering from the cold or from fear? Athelweard let go of her waist, twined her loose hair into his fist, pulling her head back, pressing the sword deeper. “I swear it,” he threatened, “I will cut her throat!” And suddenly he was falling, taking Emma and the child down with him, the crash of the chamber pot crunching into skin and bone as Leofgifu smashed it hard across the nape of his neck, urine and broken pottery scattering everywhere. An inglorious end to a foolish attempt at futile ambition.

  Emma’s inclination was to have Athelweard strung up by his privates there and then, but to kill him could prove damaging, for he had kindred, and kindred were too often eager for the taking up of the blood feud, and there was too much unrest in the West Country to risk fanning a few stray sparks into a full, burning blaze. Aside, death was too good, too quick for him, and a Queen, a woman, was not permitted, through the respect of decency, to issue the order for a man to be killed. Ælfgifu of Northampton might stoop to the depth of indecency, but she, Emma, would not.

  For one month she left Athelweard to moulder, chained in the stink of a pigpen, while she decided what to do with him. When she had been purified from childbirth in the sight of God and was able to resume her duties, she had him publicly blinded and gelded, and declaring him nithing, outlaw, sent him into the dishonourable state of exile. A pity she could not deal as easily with Ælfgifu and Thorkell. Both were harbouring ideas beyond their reach, both Emma would have been happy to see the back of. Both were as constantly irritating as winter chilblains, rubbed raw by a too-tight boot. And for both she could do nothing except sit and watch, and wait.