The Price of Blood

by Patricia Bracewell

  If it was Elgiva, let her stay with this Thurbrand of Holderness. If she was far from the seat of power, she could do no harm.

  Long after Father Martin had left, though, Emma’s thoughts lingered upon what he had said, and at last she unburdened her heart to Margot.

  “What think you, Margot?” she asked. “Am I wise to keep silent about Elgiva, assuming it is Elgiva?” She stood up to pace the room, thinking aloud. “Perhaps I should send someone to discover if there is any truth to this tale of a dark lady.”

  “Even if it is true,” Margot said thoughtfully, her hands busy with her embroidery, “it is not Elgiva that the king fears, is it?”

  “No,” Emma replied. “It is the man whom she might wed. Certainly not this Thurbrand, who, if Father Martin’s source is correct, appears to be content with his own wife and is not like to raise an army against the king.”

  “And as there was no mention of a Danish lord biding with this swan lady, where’s the harm?” Margot asked.

  No harm at all, Emma thought, except—

  There was one man she could think of who might be tempted to wed Elgiva and, with the backing of her lands and men and gold, challenge the king for his throne. If Athelstan knew where Elgiva was hidden, might he not attempt that very thing?

  She did not know, and she saw no reason to place temptation in his way. For surely, she told herself, it was the possibility that Athelstan might try to seize the throne that she feared, and not that he, as his father had years ago, might fall under the spell of the Lady Elgiva.

  November 1008

  Redmere, Holderness

  The palest glimmer of dawn light had begun to creep into her chamber when Elgiva woke to the delicious sensation of fingertips brushing along her naked hip then sweeping down toward her inner thigh. She turned over, reached for the man lying beside her in the great bed, and placed her hand lightly against his cheek.

  “Again?” she whispered.

  He did not answer, but began to suckle her breast, using hands and mouth to arouse her until she thought she must cry out with her need for him. But he was in no mood to hurry, and he teased and tormented her until she pleaded with him, and at last he entered her, moving from a languid to an urgent rhythm until waves of pleasure broke over her and his own release quickly followed. When he eased himself from her, she lay in his arms and studied his face in the dim light.

  “I wish that you did not have to leave today,” she whispered.

  “Bid me stay, and I will.”

  Her dark hair lay spilled upon the pillows around them, and he toyed purposefully with a coil of it. She knew this game. He was a devil, tempting her to grant her own wish and compel him to stay. But they had gone over the plan yesterday for hours, and the necessary preparations had all been made. It would take him months to speak to every man on the long tally of her father’s former retainers, spread as they were across a wide swath of Mercia and the Five Boroughs. Yet the task must be completed before King Æthelred’s great gathering of ships at Sandwich in May, and it must begin before the household stirred this morning and someone blundered into her chamber.

  “I wish that we could stay here forever,” she said, tracing his lips with her finger, “but there is very little time for you to accomplish all that you must do. The sooner you leave, the sooner you will return to me.”

  He grimaced in mock despair before delivering one last, lingering kiss.

  “Much as it grieves me, I shall do as my lady bids,” he whispered, then slipped from her bed.

  She turned over to watch him dress, admiring the play of muscle beneath naked skin.

  “Tell me again, Alric,” she said, “what you intend to say to them.”

  “I will say,” he replied, pulling on woolen breecs, “that you are alive and well, but that you must remain in hiding because the king would have you as dead as your father and brothers. I will suggest that if they are foolish enough to keep their pledges of loyalty to Æthelred, he will reward them with betrayal—their lands forfeited, their families torn apart.” Sitting down beside her he pulled on his boots. “I will assure them that Ealdorman Eadric is a butchering liar and that they should be as wary of him as they would an adder about to strike.”

  She sat up and rested her chin upon his shoulder. “But you must go about it slowly. Take your time. Make certain that they trust you before you reveal anything, and then do it sparingly and reluctantly. Say nothing yet of Cnut or Swein, or even of Thurbrand.” Thurbrand, the bastard, was like her father—unwilling to recognize that a woman could do more than produce babies. As far as he was concerned, her role was to open her legs for Cnut and keep her mouth shut. If he knew what she and Alric were doing, he would be livid. “We must not give the game away before it is begun, and my husband, it seems, is not yet prepared to keep all his promises to me.”

  She had given up begging Cnut to come to her, and instead had sent messengers to his royal father with whatever news she could garner. It was meager, to be sure, but it might be of some use to him, and it was her way of reminding the Danish king that he had sworn that he would one day take Æthelred’s crown.

  Alric, boots in place, turned to face her. “I am to sow mistrust and discontent, without drawing too much attention to myself.”

  She nodded, satisfied.

  “You have it exactly. When Swein does come, we want the men of the north reluctant to take up arms against him.” She bit her lip. Swein must come. And Cnut must come before that, and very soon. She needed a son. “It would seem,” she said, thinking aloud, “that in my husband’s absence I must be the one to lay the foundation for his rule. Perhaps one day he may even appreciate my efforts.”

  He took her hand and whispered, “I have no doubt, my lady, that he will build upon your work; but I suspect that he will never appreciate you as you deserve.”

  He kissed her palm, and when he released her, she removed from her thumb a golden ring engraved with her name.

  “Use this as a token that you have been sent by me,” she said, placing the ring on his smallest finger. “It was a gift from a faithless king, and it is fitting that we use it to undermine his people’s trust in him. Have a care, though, who sees it. Eadric has spies everywhere.”

  He nodded and, getting to his feet, threw on a fur-lined hooded cloak and bowed low before her. He looked every inch the royal emissary, and she nodded her approval.

  When he left her, slipping from her chamber as quietly as a wraith, the chilly room seemed to grow even colder. She lay back down among the bedclothes and began to compose in her head the messages that she would send to Swein and to Cnut, urging them to bring their army to England. Would any words of hers, though, move them to action? It had been more than a year since Cnut had sailed to Denmark. She could not even remember what he looked like but for his height and his fiery hair.

  She closed her eyes, conjured Alric’s image with no effort at all, and smiled. Cnut had been away too long, and after so many years of playing at seduction with Alric—a game that had always ended in a draw—she had at last decided to give in.

  It was possible, she supposed, that she would regret taking him as her lover, but she did not think it likely. Alric knew as well as she did that his future success depended on her, and that hers depended upon Cnut. The son of the Danish king was their key to power, and when her husband returned to her bed, Alric would not complain.

  She drew one of the furs around her and, leaving her warm bed she went to one of the large coffers that stood against the wall. The key to this one she kept on a chain about her neck, and now she used it to unlock the great chest. The prize she pulled from it was a highly polished wooden box that fit in the palm of her hand. Opening it she considered the four chambers within—a large one, and three smaller ones—and the red, black, and white glass beads that they held. Tyra’s instructions, when she had presented her with this gift, had been
precise. Starting on the first day of her courses, she must each day put a red bead in the large compartment until her bleeding ceased. Then she must daily place a white bead to join the red.

  “When Cnut returns to you,” Tyra had said, “the white-bead days will be most important, for on those days you will be most likely to conceive a child.”

  After the white beads had all been moved to the larger chamber, the black beads, marking the days when no man’s seed would grow within her, must be placed there in their turn.

  Elgiva bit her lip. This morning the largest compartment held all the red and white beads as well as a scattering of black. She took another black bead from its nest, placed it in the larger chamber, shut the lid tight, and replaced the box and locked the coffer.

  If the beads could be used to help her conceive, then it stood to reason that if used contrariwise they would keep her belly from swelling while her husband was across the seas.

  If Tyra’s beads should prove faulty—the thought of what might happen then sent a shudder through her as she scurried back to her bed. But Tyra had assured her that the beads would work, and she had come to trust her sullen slave about such matters, as did everyone else, it seemed, in Holderness.

  “She is a Sámi woman,” Catla had told her, “taken from her homeland in the far north. She has the gift of foretelling.”

  Elgiva knew nothing about the Sámi people, but she had watched Tyra cast the rune sticks, and the watching had raised gooseflesh along her arms. It seemed to her that Tyra read more than just the markings carved on those yellowed bits of bone. She read hearts and minds, too, as if every face she looked at had been scored with runes that only she could see.

  “Do you ever lie to people?” she had asked Tyra once. “Tell them what you believe they want to hear instead of what you have read in the runes?”

  It was the only time she had ever seen fear in the Sámi woman’s eyes.

  “My gift is from the gods,” Tyra had answered her. “I dare not lie, for to abuse such a gift is to risk the gods’ vengeance.”

  So, Tyra was a truth teller as well as a rune reader—and because of that, Elgiva considered her perhaps the most valuable of all the gifts that Cnut had given her.

  She lay back on her pillows and listened to the sounds that had begun to filter into her chamber from the yard outside—youths drawing water, women stirring up the kitchen fires, the murmur of voices speaking English as well as Cnut’s Danish tongue. They were her people now, part of her household and this holding that she rented from Thurbrand—an excellent use of Cnut’s silver as far as she was concerned. She could wish that it was farther away from the dwelling of Thurbrand and that mouse, Catla, but she might one day have need of Thurbrand’s fortified walls.

  There were men who continued to search for her. Now and then someone would appear in one of the nearby villages asking questions, and Thurbrand would send a party out to deal with them. Only a few weeks ago a Norman priest had come as close as Beverley, and she had been alarmed when she heard of it, for she feared that it was someone sent by Emma.

  But Tyra had cast the rune sticks and had told her that she need fear no priest.

  The woman had said nothing about kings, though, or their henchmen, and Elgiva had no doubt that Æthelred and Eadric wanted her dead.

  A.D. 1009 This year were the ships ready, that we before spoke about; and there were so many of them as never were in England before, in any king’s days, as books tell us. And they were all transported together to Sandwich; that they should lie there, and defend this land against any out-force.

  —The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

  Chapter Fifteen

  April 1009

  London

  It was nearing noontide when Æthelred took his place beneath the royal canopy set close beside the Thames. He acknowledged the greetings of the nobles and prelates who clustered about the dais, and when he was seated he beckoned to Edmund and Edyth to take the chairs on either side of him. He spared a glance at a second pavilion that had been erected for the queen.

  Emma, however, had sent word that she was unwell and would not be present today. She must be ill indeed, he thought, to forgo such an important occasion. It was unlike her. The boy was here though, young Edward, with his playfellow to keep him entertained, as well as a small mob of the queen’s attendants to keep the boys from venturing too near the water’s edge.

  Shielding his eyes against the sun he looked to the river and nodded with satisfaction. Most of the inhabitants of London, it seemed, had turned out for the blessing of the ships. They thronged the shore on both sides of the Thames and crowded along the railings of its massive wooden bridge, shouting and waving, tossing flowers and leafy garlands onto the shimmering surface of the water. Hundreds had clambered aboard the ferries and barges that normally plied the river but that today served as viewing stands for the central event.

  In the middle of the channel, bright sails billowing and banners snapping, thirty of his newly built warships were maneuvering into position, preparing for the moment when the tide would turn and carry them past his pavilion and eastward to the sea. Not since the time of King Alfred had so many warships filled the Thames. Yet this was only a fraction of the fleet that would gather next month at Sandwich. From there they would guard his coasts, able to intercept and engage any fleet that threatened his realm.

  It would be a massive, floating safety net, built by his thegns and blessed by his bishops, yes, but ordered into existence by him. As he drank in the sight of the mighty ships he felt his heart swell with pride. This was the answer to the dark dreams that had filled his broken nights. How many times had he wakened in the silent hours to find the cold, piercing eyes of his dead brother’s wraith gleaming at him from the shadows—a midnight companion that terrorized him still?

  But not today. There was no place in the brightness and glitter of this day for the shade of a dead king, and the only anxiety that gnawed at him now had to do with his eldest son. Athelstan, who should have been standing here beside him, had left the city. The rest of his sons were at their posts—Edmund and Edward here, and the other two aboard their assigned ships. Athelstan, though, had left London last night after yet another quarrel about Eadric.

  And so, on a day when he should have had no cares to mar his triumph, he was forced to consider what devilry his son might be stirring up.

  He glanced at Edmund, who was silently observing the activities on the water. Edmund and Athelstan had ever been close, but recently there had been a chill between the brothers—or so Edyth had advised him. Something had occurred at Corfe last fall, she had suggested, perhaps something to do with Edgar’s death. Whatever it was, it seemed to have placed a wedge between his two eldest sons.

  That was likely all to the good, he mused. If there was a breech between the brothers, he might be able to make use of it.

  He had long suspected Athelstan of working against him in secret, of forging alliances that he might one day use against his king and father. Christ! Even in public his eldest son had ever been ready to argue against his decisions, and in council he had been far too quick to voice objections. Last night’s outburst against recent powers granted to Eadric was only the latest skirmish in the long battle between them. If Athelstan was entertaining any thoughts of moving against him—or against Eadric, for that was far more likely—Edmund might well be privy to them. And what better time to glean information from Edmund than now, when the brothers were at odds and this one perhaps less guarded about revealing whatever he may know or guess about the actions of the other?

  He did not lift his gaze from the river, but murmured to Edmund, “I’m told that when Athelstan set out from London last night, he went north. Did he tell you where he was going?”

  Now he chanced a quick look at his son, seeing the dark brows furrow and the eyes narrow as Edmund squinted into the sunshine.

  “He will m
eet us at Sandwich, my lord,” Edmund replied, tight-lipped.

  The gathering at Sandwich was set for late in May, some three weeks hence. And Edmund had not, in fact, answered his question.

  “He was not riding toward Sandwich, Edmund,” he growled, “and I would know where he will spend the intervening time.” He hesitated, still uncertain as to where Edmund’s true loyalties lay. Would he speak the truth, even if he knew it? Edmund might lie if he thought it necessary to protect his brother. “I am concerned for Athelstan,” he added. “I fear that he may be playing some dangerous game, one that he will come to regret.”

  He shifted his eyes toward Edmund again and, noting that his son was no longer looking at the ships, followed Edmund’s gaze to where young Edward stood pointing at the colorful sails upon the water, his face lit with boyish delight.

  “What kind of game would you play, my lord,” Edmund asked, “if your father named the infant son of a foreign bride his heir?”

  Æthelred snorted. “Does Athelstan fear Edward so much? A child with few supporters?”

  “Few?” Edmund echoed. “At your command, my lord, your nobles have pledged to accept Edward as your heir. Even if most of them disavow that oath in the time to come,” he lowered his voice, “there are many powerful men who would be eager to see Edward inherit your throne. The brother of your Norman queen, I think, would like to extend his reach beyond the Narrow Sea should the opportunity arise. And,” he said, even more softly, “there are men of influence here in England who would seek even greater power by controlling the regency of a young king.”

  There was no mistaking this barely veiled reference to Eadric. They were jealous of Eadric, these sons of his, and that suited him well enough. Jealousy among his family might be dangerous, but it had its uses.

  “I am far more concerned with what plots are brewing now than in those that may surface after my death,” he growled, impatient with Edmund’s skill at avoiding his question. “I will ask you again. Where is your brother?”