William was struck by how strange his life was. I bet other boys don’t have to think about things like this. They don’t look at their cousins and their uncles and wonder if one of them is secretly their enemy. Why should I have to do that? It’s not fair!
He was about to put this point to Osbern, but just then the cathedral was filled with the sound of voices praising God to the heavens. The choir had started singing. The funeral service had begun.
6
Bruges, capital of the county of Flanders
Emma of Normandy, the twice-crowned and twice-widowed queen of England, once wife to Ethelred the Ill-Advised and to Canute the Great, and mother to three princes, rose from her pew in St Donaa’s Cathedral, stepped out into the aisle and crossed herself as she genuflected before the altar. A day had passed since she had heard that her brother Robert was dead. She had realised at once that there was no time to get to Rouen in time for his funeral: certainly not in the painfully slow and uncomfortable carriage, little more than a covered cart, in which she would, on the grounds of womanhood, age and propriety, be obliged to travel.
How times had changed. As a young girl, she had ridden a horse with just as much speed and daring as any of her brothers, and far more courage – or was it simply foolhardiness? – than Robert. He had always, from his earliest boyhood, been one to weigh up the odds and act accordingly, while she threw herself at the highest, riskiest jumps she could find, just to prove that she could. In later life, however, as she experienced both the strengths and the very glaring weaknesses of a royal consort’s position, she had come to value Robert’s shrewd, unsentimental counsel with every passing year. His letters had been a constant source of support throughout her time in England and her more recent exile in Bruges. For years he had been her only source of news about Edward and Alfred, her two sons by Ethelred, whom Canute had insisted on banishing to Normandy. Robert was never afraid to say things he knew she would not want to hear, but only because he believed that she needed to know the truth, as he saw it, when so many others around her would only give her flattery or deceit. She would miss that, and the pleasure of the sly wit with which he commented on people and events.
And so, since she could not say goodbye to her brother in person, she had requested a mass to be sung in his memory, in return for which she was expected to make a suitable donation to the cathedral. She was not surprised by the requirement for money. She had rarely met an abbot or bishop who did not hide the mind of a Levantine moneylender behind his mask of simpering piety. Even so, Robert had been an archbishop, a prince of the Church. Surely they should not have required payment to pray for one of their own.
As she rose to her feet, Emma looked up, past the altar and the strong, squat arches supporting the eight-sided church, past the second row of much taller arches, each one subdivided by two rows of Roman columns, past the stonework covered in richly patterned marble and into the roof. Figures of saints and apostles, picked out in mosaic, gazed up towards the figure of Jesus, who looked down from the apex of the dazzling golden dome. Here the glory and majesty of the Saviour was made manifest in glass and stone, in a physical embodiment of the exultation of the priests and worshippers below.
Emma had always joined wholeheartedly in that worship. Her love of God and trust in His blessings had carried her through crises and tribulations that would have broken a lesser woman. But over the past few years her faith had been tested to its absolute limit. The sudden, entirely unexpected death of Canute had wounded her deeply, for though their union had been agreed as a matter of political expediency, it had become a true, loving marriage. But that pain turned out to be nothing compared to the agony she had suffered when Alfred was mutilated and murdered. That atrocity had ripped out her heart and shredded her soul. Night after night he came to her in hellish dreams, gazing at her with a sightless stare from empty, bloody sockets, his eyes cut out by Harold Harefoot’s knife as the English king took revenge for her son’s attempt to claim his throne. Every morning when she awoke, her exhaustion was a fraction greater and her nerves stretched a little closer to their breaking point. Her grief was a crushing weight bearing down upon her heart, and she went through her waking hours desperately trying to suppress the cries of agony and despair that beat against her chest like prisoners hammering on the door of their cell.
She looked back up at the face of Jesus and her mind screamed: How could you do that to my boy? You suffered up there on the cross – why did you look down from heaven and let another man suffer even more?
An unsayable, blasphemous thought came unbidden to her mind. What if the Saviour was not looking down, and there was no heaven, or hell – just the good and ill mankind did here on earth, in the brief flicker of life between a baby’s first tears and that final breath?
She was walking now, hardly knowing how she had made her way from the aisle to the ambulatory – the sixteen-sided walkway that ran around the cathedral. There were people waiting for her, as always. Some had heard of her generosity to the poor and ailing and came seeking her charity; others were simply curious to set eyes on an actual flesh-and-blood queen. Emma did not disappoint. She was tall for a woman, taller than most men. But there was nothing remotely manly in the slenderness of her figure, the grace with which she carried herself or the fine-boned elegance of her face. Age and suffering had made her less pretty than she had been as a girl, but that loss was more than made up for by the way in which the fine lines etched so faintly around her features seemed to convey both grandeur and suffering, so that she was somehow regal and yet vulnerable at one and the same time.
Supplicants cried out for her attention, but Emma’s sympathy was caught by a young woman standing in the shadow of an archway with a baby in her arms. She was little more than a baby herself, Emma saw, as she walked closer: twelve or thirteen at most.
‘Come here, my child,’ she said.
The girl looked up at her with frightened eyes that darted between Emma, her baby and the other alms-seekers. Emma could feel the envy and hostility in their stares, and so she turned and swept her eyes over the tightening circle of hungry, desperate faces, saying nothing, forcing them to retreat by the sheer force of her personality, as a man might use the flame from a burning torch to keep a pack of wolves at bay.
Now she looked back at the mother and child. ‘Come here,’ she repeated. ‘Don’t be afraid.’
The girl took a couple of nervous steps and then stopped. Emma smiled at her and took two paces of her own across the flagstone floor to bridge the gap between them. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
The girl just about managed to say, ‘Agatha,’ but then paused, not sure how to end the sentence. ‘Your . . . um . . .’
‘Majesty,’ said Emma, gently. ‘But please, don’t trouble yourself with that.’ She looked down at the tiny figure of the infant.
‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she asked.
‘Boy.’
‘Does he have a name?’
Agatha shook her head.
‘Well, he’s very new, isn’t he? Plenty of time to think of a name. When was he born?’
‘Five days ago.’
‘I see . . . and do you have any family to help you look after him?’
Agatha’s face crumpled. She shook her head. Emma pulled out a linen handkerchief, decorated with finely worked lace, and gave it to the girl, who wiped it across her face and then stretched out her hand to give it back.
‘Keep it,’ Emma said, sensing the intake of breath from the onlookers, who were gradually edging closer again. That handkerchief alone was more valuable than any possession any of them was ever likely to own, and yet to Emma it was nothing.
The girl had gathered herself enough to speak. ‘Got a mother and a father, but they don’t want nothing to do with me. They say I’m a disgrace, let the whole family down. But I didn’t want to do it. Haakon made me.’
‘Where are we going?’ the girl asked as they emerged from the cathedral on to the square outside.
The cathedral occupied one whole side of the square and the Count of Flanders’ castle another, so that the centre of the city was perfectly balanced between the power of man and that of God.
Emma had stayed for a while at the castle after she had fled England. Now, though, she resided at a house of her own, not far away, provided by Count Baldwin. It was there that she led Agatha and her baby. As they got closer, she said, ‘When we arrive, I want you to go to the kitchen. It’s across the yard at the back of the house. Tell my housekeeper Berenice that I sent you to her and that she’s to find you some proper clothes and give you a hearty meal. You need food in your belly if you’re to have milk for your baby. Once you’re fed and dressed, we’ll decide what to do about your parents and . . .’
Emma fell silent and stood still. Up ahead, four men were dismounting in front of her house. Three of them were men-at-arms in chain-mail coats, while the fourth, who seemed to be of noble blood to judge by the deferential way in which the soldiers stood aside for him, was dressed in a woollen riding cloak and tunic.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Agatha, sounding frightened.
‘I have a visitor,’ said Emma. ‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing to do with you. Run along now and find Berenice. I’ll talk to you later.’
The girl scuttled away, clutching her baby even more tightly to her as she passed the armed men. Emma ignored them and made her way towards the nobleman, who was standing by her front door. He was modestly built, half a head shorter than Emma, with a weak, soft physique, unhardened by labour, hunting or war. His hair and beard were both white blonde and his skin was eerily pale, with just a splash of pink in either cheek to indicate that he had been out riding on a cold winter morning. Now that she was close to him, Emma could see that he appeared to have fallen on hard times, for though his clothes were made of finely woven material, they were well worn and bore the marks of the darns and stitches that had been used to mend them. The embroidered decoration around the hem of the cloak was faded and patchy.
Emma felt oddly troubled. She did not believe that she had ever met this man, and yet there was something familiar about him, something in the way he looked that reminded her . . . And then he smiled – a cold, smug expression that suggested pleasure with himself rather than anything or anyone else – and she suddenly realised who he was as he said, ‘Hello, Mother, don’t you recognise your own son?’
King Edward of England, as he liked to be titled, though he had long lived in Rouen, watched his mother struggle to retain her composure. He had wondered whether he would recognise her – it had been more than twenty years since they’d last clapped eyes on one another, after all, and he’d only been a boy of twelve then. He’d changed a lot, whereas she had merely grown older, greyer and more careworn. Poor Mother – events really hadn’t worked out as she’d planned. She’d married a fit, virile young king, several years her junior. She’d have expected a few more years out of him than he’d given her.
‘Edward, you came,’ she said, and smiled at him, the hypocritical bitch. ‘I’d almost given up hope, but—’
‘You seem to have settled very comfortably here,’ he said, ignoring her as he looked around the substantial hall that rose to the full height of the building. He made what might have been a compliment sound like a criticism, as if she were being somehow indolent and self-indulgent by living so well while in exile; as if it were somehow all at his expense.
‘Count Baldwin has been very generous,’ she said. ‘And I managed to salvage a few belongings when I left England. Harold tried to rob me of everything, but he didn’t quite succeed.’
‘From what I gather, you were as rich as Croesus, Mother. I’m sure that even a small part of your fortune will be more than sufficient to keep you in suitably queenly style.’
His words had wounded her, Edward saw. Good. He wanted her to hurt. She had caused him enough pain; it was time she knew how it felt.
‘Please, Edward,’ she said, and suddenly there was something almost pathetic in her yearning voice and the desperation in her eyes. ‘Have a heart. I’ve lost my husband, my son and my brother too. Now here you are, after all these years, and I just want to be your mother again.’
‘No you don’t, you just want to get one of your boys on to the throne of England – the throne that is rightfully mine – and since Harthacnut is more interested in ruling Denmark, you had no . . .’ Edward paused in mid-diatribe, suddenly struck by something his mother had just said. ‘What do you mean, you’ve lost your brother?’
‘Hadn’t you heard? Your uncle Robert is dead. I thought that was why you’d come. I thought you might . . . well, you might think I’d be upset and need,’ she sighed, ‘I don’t know . . . comforting, maybe.’
Edward was fascinated. Everything he had ever thought about his mother had been based on the notion that she was tough, calculating, ruthless – very much like his uncle Robert, in fact. And yet the woman before him now was nothing like that at all. Unless, of course, she was deceiving him. That was very possible. One only had to study the Bible to know how females from Eve to Jezebel to Delilah had used their powers to trap and weaken men. But she would not fool him.
‘I knew that His Grace the archbishop was ill,’ he said, aiming for an air of kingly detachment. ‘But I have spent this past week in Boulogne with my sister Goda – your daughter, madam, though you have not seen fit to honour her with your presence, either.’
‘You know as well as I do that it’s not a matter of what I see fit. I long to see Goda. But I’m a woman and, what’s more, a guest of Count Baldwin, dependent on his favour. I can’t just go riding off the way you can, unless he consents to permit it.’
Edward was entirely unimpressed by his mother’s protestations. ‘Be that as it may,’ he went on, ‘the news had not reached Boulogne when I left to come here. You have entreated me to visit you for a while now and, being so close, it seemed like an apt opportunity. But now you say my uncle is dead, eh? Well I’m sure he had his reasons . . . That man did nothing unless he planned to benefit from it.’
For some reason Edward could not fathom, his words seemed to jolt his mother out of her feebleness. She visibly grew in stature before his eyes as she drew herself up straight, and actually looked down on him as she snapped, ‘For pity’s sake, Edward, do you not have a single kind or compassionate bone in your body? He was your uncle, your own flesh and blood. Is it really too much to ask you to mourn him just a little?’
‘How dare you!’ Edward was disturbed to find his voice rising much higher than he had expected, so that he sounded more like a whining boy than a full-grown man. ‘How dare you accuse me of lacking kindness or compassion? How dare you think that I should be giving you comfort! You talk about flesh and blood; well, I’m your flesh and blood, but how much kindness, or comfort, or compassion did you show me? You abandoned me so that you could go and fuck that Dane, Canute. A man who had waged war on your true husband, my father . . . And talk about mourning. Father was hardly cold in his grave before you were spreading your legs for Canute and—’
He barely even saw his mother’s hand before it slapped him across the side of his face, wrenching his head half off his neck and almost knocking him off his feet. The pain of it was unlike anything Edward had ever known, and it was all he could do not to cry.
‘You can’t do that,’ he mumbled, bent almost double with his hands cradling his wounde
d face. ‘You can’t strike the King of England.’
‘But you aren’t the King of England, Edward. Harold Harefoot is. He murdered your brother, and if you were any kind of a man, you wouldn’t be visiting your sister, or your mother. You’d be burning with vengeance, raising an army, putting together a fleet, finding allies to join your cause, doing absolutely anything you could to find a way back to England to kill the man who slaughtered your brother and to take back your throne.’
Edward thought back to his one, not even half-hearted attempt at invading England. He’d sailed up the Solent, seen the English forces massing on the shore ahead, watched in horror as his commander, Rabel, insisted on landing and engaging the enemy, heaved a huge sigh of relief when the battle ended in victory and then ordered his men straight back on to their boats to sail back to Normandy.
He knew that some men had branded him a coward for his refusal to press home the advantage and march into England. But look what had happened to Alfred. When he came ashore, he hadn’t turned back. And a fat lot of good it had done him.
‘I’ve not forgotten Alfred,’ he said, doing his best to stand upright again. ‘Sneer all you like. Hit me, despise me; you’ve never loved me, why should you start now? But just remember this, Mother. Your beloved Alfred may have been your favourite – don’t even pretend to deny it – but he’s dead and I’m not. I’m alive, and I intend to stay that way until the time is right. The people of England know that Harold Harefoot is no true king. I’ve heard tell he’s not even Canute’s boy at all. They say his mother Elgiva, who sounds like a proper slut even by Canute’s standards, couldn’t have a baby, so she bought one off a cobbler’s wife and passed it off as her own.’
‘I’ve heard that too,’ Emma said.
‘Well then, the man’s as common as muck, and the people know it. They’ll want a proper king soon, one who can prove he has royal blood in his veins. Not some Dane, but an Englishman who—’
The Leopards of Normandy: Duke: Leopards of Normandy 2 Page 5