The Price of Blood

by Patricia Bracewell

  When prodded by the point of a sword drawn by one of his father’s stone-faced hearth guards, Athelstan had turned and stalked out of the tent. He had waited near the entrance, though, to watch the others leave—all but Eadric, who had remained inside with the king. Eadric—the man of the hour and the only man the king listened to or trusted. Or believed.

  He wished to know what the king was discussing with Eadric, but the tent flap was down and the two guards merely glared at him, unmoving. Frustrated, he left, making for his own tent. He had not gone far when his brother Edrid and Lord Uhtred fell into step beside him.

  “The king is a fool,” Athelstan snarled, “and I am an even greater one.” He had let his temper rule him, while Eadric had remained calm and merely outfaced him.

  “Aye, my lord,” Uhtred agreed. “You should learn to keep your mouth shut around your father; he seems not to value your advice.”

  “Yet he insists that I attend his council.”

  “That is because he fears you,” Uhtred replied. “Did you not see his face in there? He looked as if he was seeing the devil incarnate, and he was staring straight at you! What mischief have you been up to that so terrifies the king?”

  Athelstan glanced at the big ealdorman from Northumbria. They’d come to know each other somewhat these past weeks, and to his surprise he’d grown to like Uhtred. The man was no beauty, and he could be crude as hell, but his men loved him and he was no more self-serving than anyone else on the king’s council.

  “I went north in the spring and asked questions about Eadric,” Athelstan said. “My father must have learned of it.”

  Uhtred’s eyes locked on his as if he read far more in that sentence than the words conveyed.

  “Oh aye,” Uhtred grunted, “and you let it be known, I’ll warrant, that you bear no love for the king’s darling Eadric. Do you and your father agree on anything?”

  “Not that I am aware of,” Athelstan said with a bitter laugh.

  Uhtred nodded, and they walked in silence for a few steps. Then Uhtred said, “You were right about one thing back there.” He gestured with his thumb, back toward the king’s pavilion. “The ship rats will not leave England anytime soon. Eventually the king will have to fight them or bribe them, no matter what Eadric counsels.”

  “What do you think, Uhtred,” Edrid asked, “could we have won a battle?”

  Uhtred shrugged. “Who knows? Would Godwine’s men have deserted, and if they had, would it have made a difference? The outcome of a battle rests on luck and leadership as much as on the numbers on either side. But Godwine was right when he said we should have stopped the shipmen before they raided all the way up into Berkshire. It was Eadric’s delay that forced us to wait. I wonder if his late arrival was merely cowardice, or if it was treachery.”

  “It was treachery,” Athelstan said, the realization suddenly dawning on him. “Eadric came here determined to avoid a pitched battle because, win or lose, it would be to his disadvantage. If we won, it would be you, Uhtred, who would reap the glory because you laid out the battle plan. If we lost, the king would blame his council, including Eadric, and so Eadric’s influence would be lessened. He could not risk either of those outcomes, and so he had to find a way to prevent the battle. Eadric is brilliant. And he is a complete and utter villain.”

  “There must be a way to pry him from the king’s side,” Edrid insisted.

  Uhtred snorted. “Forget him, lad. He’s a worm. It’s this piece of Danish offal, Thorkell, that we must fear. He’ll be laughing all the way to his ships now, rejoicing that we’ve not attempted to get in his way. Mark me, he’ll strike somewhere else before this is over, and I want to know where.”

  Athelstan halted as the truth of Uhtred’s words struck him. A pitched battle against a similar-size force was the last thing that Thorkell wanted. Instead he would look for a rich target that he could bleed into submission, as he had done at Canterbury. The English army was too close to Winchester to make that city an attractive target, and that left only one other.

  “He will go to London,” he said. London, where Emma was trapped, awaiting the birth of her child.

  “It is what I would do,” Uhtred agreed. “The question is when will he go? Will he wait out the winter months on Wight?”

  “No,” Athelstan said. “He has ravaged along this coast already, and our own army has depleted most of the harvest in Dorset. He has too many mouths to feed to remain here.”

  Uhtred grunted. “Yet our army cannot move until his does, and his ships will get him to London faster than we can walk it, unless God sends a storm to swallow his fleet.”

  Uhtred was right, and Athelstan could imagine what would happen next as if it had been written down for him. Thorkell’s unbloodied, unchallenged army would sail northward, soon, while the good weather lasted. They would make for the Thames and for London, where Thorkell would try to starve or cripple or beat the city into submission.

  “London has plenty of good men,” he said, “but they need to be warned.”

  “Then you’d better warn them,” Uhtred growled, “because the king won’t do it. He’s deceived himself into believing that the shipmen will be happy with the plunder they’ve taken and will scurry home.” He placed a meaty hand on Athelstan’s arm. “But don’t go yourself, man! If you go haring off to London without the king’s leave, it will be another sin added to your tally. Eadric is with your father right now, likely trying to poison his mind against you, so play the good son for a few more days. Give him the lie. Send your warning, and let London look out for itself. You’ll get there soon enough.”

  Uhtred stalked away, and Athelstan, with Edrid still beside him, made for his own quarters.

  “What are you going to do?” Edrid asked anxiously.

  “Send messengers to London,” he snapped. Uhtred was right. He must play the good son, and, in any case, his presence in London would make no difference. It was the warning that mattered; so he would send it, and follow as soon as he could.

  Chapter Twenty

  November 1009

  London

  The rain began to drum on the slate roof of St. Botolph’s Aldgate as the priest intoned the final blessing. Emma, kneeling below the altar amid nuns, priests, and London’s noble elite, bowed her head and whispered a last, fervent prayer for the English people. When she stood up and made her way through the congregation and into the porch, Bishop Ælfhun drew beside her and placed a restraining hand upon her arm.

  “Wait until the rain has eased, my lady,” he said. “The shower will pass soon enough.”

  But she could not wait. The milk in her breasts had turned them to stone, and in the palace on the other side of London her daughter would be howling with hunger.

  She smiled at the bishop and patted his hand.

  “I am well defended against the weather,” she said. Her woolen headrail was fastened tight beneath her chin, and now she pulled the hood of her fur-lined cloak over that. “Come to the palace as soon after midday as you can. I have summoned the local reeves as well to discuss what more must be done to maintain order within the city.”

  It had been five days since word arrived that enemy ships had sailed into the mouth of the Thames. Their appearance had not been unexpected, because Athelstan had sent a warning that London might soon be under siege. The exact number of ships was still under debate, though—some said fifty vessels, others swore there were five hundred. The shipmen had set up camps on both sides of the river and had systematically begun to ravage farm holds and villages for food and supplies. They had pillaged grain stores from Tilbury to Shoebury and had herded scores of cattle and sheep into their camps.

  They would not be leaving anytime soon.

  In a matter of days the Aldgate had been flooded with streams of people seeking the shelter of London’s walls, and that tide had only increased with each passing day. This morning
she had come to pray at the little church just beyond the eastern gate and to see for herself what the conditions were like for those fleeing from the savagery of the Danes. She could not cower behind her palace walls. The people had to be reassured that she was in their midst.

  Now she stepped into the downpour and nodded to her grooms to assist her into the saddle. Her bannermen moved forward, setting a measured pace, their standards limp in the steady rain. Three priests followed her, chanting a litany. She murmured the response to the prayer automatically as she scanned the road and the broad wastelands on either side, awash with water, mud, and refuse.

  Here, between London’s eastern gate and the Walbrook, makeshift shelters had been erected to house those who had fled their farms and villages. They had carried with them their children, their household goods, their animals, and their terror. They had carried tales of disaster, as well, rumors that had been winging through the city for days like shreds of burning thatch.

  The king has lost a great battle in Hampshire.

  The king and his sons have been killed.

  Canterbury and Winchester have been torched and burnt to the ground.

  The more outrageous and unbelievable the report, the more it was repeated. Yet the truth, she reflected, was bad enough.

  She had not yet reached the Walbrook when the rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Beyond the bridge the road was lined with people who took up the response to the litany, and like a distant rumble of thunder the sound of it swelled and echoed.

  Ora pro nobis. Pray for us.

  Emma pulled back her hood and gravely studied the faces around her—hollow-eyed men, haggard from sleeping rough; children with their mouths agape; monks and nuns; matrons cloaked in furs; old women dressed in little more than rags. The only thing they had in common was the fear that she could read in their eyes.

  It was the women with infants at their breasts, rocking from side to side to comfort their babes, who broke her heart. Her own breasts ached for her daughter. Like these women, she had a helpless child who was completely dependent on her. Like them, she was afraid of what terrors the future held.

  Her thoughts drifted to the king’s eldest daughter, Edyth. Barely sixteen winters old, she was pregnant with her first child and was even now at Headington for her lying-in. Emma wondered how childbirth would change Edyth, for she was certain that it must. She hoped that motherhood would soften her stepdaughter, and that the breach that gapped between them would be healed.

  When at last she rode through the palace gate, she was alert for the sound of Godiva’s crying. At five weeks old, her daughter was not the placid babe that Edward had been. The child was fretful and restless no matter what attempts were made to pacify her. Margot had insisted that some babes cried more than others, but it had not relieved Emma’s fear that something was wrong. Abbess Ælfwynn had advised that because Emma herself was distressed by the Danish attacks, her milk acted upon her infant like a poison.

  “You should give the child to a wet nurse with a sanguine humor,” Abbess Ælfwynn had said. “You are overburdened with cares and you are passing your distress to the babe.”

  But Emma had resisted this advice. The only peace she had was in the moments when she held Godiva to her breast. Her daughter’s eyes, colored the deep blue of the marsh flowers that Emma recalled from her summers at Fécamp, would fix on hers with an unblinking gaze. This respite never lasted long, for the baby would invariably fall into a heavy sleep that always ended too soon, and once more the piercing wails would echo through the palace halls.

  The heaviness and breast pain that Emma was feeling now told her that Godiva should be awake and hungry and crying for her mother.

  So why, she asked herself as she dismounted before the queen’s hall, was the palace so quiet? Her heart in her throat, she ran up the stairs leading to her chamber.

  Redmere, Holderness

  Shielded against the November chill by a heavy, woolen cloak, Elgiva picked her way along a muddy path that ran beside a trio of beehives. She had nearly completed her round of inspection—past the mews to the kitchens and brew house, behind the hall to the stables, down by the craft houses to the weaving sheds, through the orchard, and back to the women’s quarters.

  It had taken most of the morning, but she did not begrudge the time it cost her. She would be imprisoned within doors soon enough when the winter set in, and then time would move slowly indeed. Her reeve regarded her intrusion into his territory as a slight to his abilities, but she never gave any heed to his injured glances. Besides, she enjoyed it when she caught the men watching her with moon eyes while their women—well, she didn’t care about their women.

  She sniffed with pleasure at the sweet scent of malt and yeast that wafted toward her on a light breeze. Then the wind changed and brought with it the stench from the slaughter pens, where the butchering of the aged livestock was nearly finished. The smell made her gorge rise, and she hastened away from it, following the path through the apple orchard to the manor’s central yard and there she halted.

  The garth was no longer hers. It had been usurped by a ship’s complement of Danes who were garbed in mail and armed with shields and blunted swords. Ten of them had paired off to hack at each other under the watchful eye of their war leader while their companions shouted encouragement or abuse.

  The din they were making brought back evil memories. She had only ever heard the sound of real battle once, on a summer’s day in Exeter that had been filled with howls of rage and screams of terror—and with sights she would never be able to forget. It had seemed to her that the end of the world had come.

  For some, it had.

  And now similar battles were taking place somewhere far to the south, where the Danes must have begun their raiding in Wessex. She was grateful she wasn’t there to hear them or see them. Still, she wanted news.

  She wanted to know where Cnut was, or if he was still alive. There were many ways that a warrior could meet death, even aside from battle: from poisoned water or bad meat, from the bloody flux or some wasting disease, from an insignificant wound that festered and turned lethal. Cnut may even have drowned before his ship met with the others at Sandwich, and she would never know.

  She scowled at that thought. She was wed to the son of the Danish king, she held vast estates in Mercia, yet she must depend on men for nearly everything, including news of events going on in the world beyond her gates.

  And how men liked to hoard such news! They kept it from their women, seeking to protect them from the horror of what was happening in the wider world. As if women needed or wanted such protection! When a battle was lost was it not the wives and daughters who would be raped or dragged off to some worse fate by the victors? How did ignorance protect them from that?

  She wished that she had been born a man so that she would not have to look to them for so much. It was what she hated most about being a woman. That, and the task of childbearing.

  She peered speculatively down the length of her body. As yet there was no outward sign of the babe growing within her. But the child was there, she was certain. She was sick every morning, and she had missed her courses for two months now. Cnut had been gone for four, so it was going to be a near thing.

  Luckily men were half-witted and easily deceived when it came to the details of pregnancy. She would claim it was Cnut’s. Alric may not believe her, but he would not be fool enough to admit to fathering her son. And it must be a son. Even if she bore a girl child and had to replace it with someone else’s brat, she would give Cnut a son.

  No, Alric did not worry her. Tyra, though, looked at her sometimes with that cold, knowing stare. What was behind it? If the cunning woman harbored suspicions about Alric, she might be compelled to share them with Cnut or with Swein.

  But Tyra, she reminded herself, could prove nothing. If questions should ever be raised about the child’s father, what wei
ght could the claims of a slave carry when her mistress denied them as lies?

  No weight at all.

  A shout from the guard tower drew her attention, and a moment later the gate opened. She was relieved to see Alric ride in, and not Thurbrand or, worse, another boatload of Danes.

  She had sent Alric to her cousin in Lindsey weeks ago, with messages for Aldyth and her husband. She was eager to hear his news of events taking place in the south, but she had no wish to greet him under the eyes of the shipmen—eyes that were, she suspected, just a little too sharp.

  She hurried into the hall and was waiting when he strode through the entryway and tossed his mud-stained cloak to a servant. His eyes met and held hers, and she felt, as ever, the little thrill of excitement that he could arouse in her with just a glance.

  But from today she must be more circumspect with him. Her pregnancy and the presence of those shipmen in the yard dictated that. She wanted to give no one an excuse to raise questions about the child’s father. That Tyra might suspect something was bad enough. She would have to keep Alric at a distance.

  He came swiftly to her side and she held out her hand. Alric placed a lingering kiss upon her palm, and she guessed he would venture further if she allowed it. She was tempted to do so. It had been many weeks since he had been here and touched her thus, and the arguments she had used to steel herself against him nearly crumbled into dust. But she drew her hand away and stepped back a little to make a space between them.

  He raised an eyebrow at her.

  “A chilly greeting, my lady,” he said. “Have I done something to cause you displeasure? Has one of those louts I passed on my way in usurped my place in your heart?”

  She placed a warning finger against her lips, glancing past him to make sure that no one overheard them.