The Forever Queen (19 page)

“My husband ordered grain from his own granaries to be distributed to the worst-affected areas,” Emma said, knowing as she spoke that his generosity had come too little too late. Tactfully, the taverner served his brother’s best wine and said nothing.

Emma remained an hour, but with the afternoon sky beginning to cloud over, reluctantly pushed her ungainly weight up from the bench. As she came to her feet, a great gush of water burst from her womb and a pain shot through her abdomen. She cried out, half fell, embarrassed and alarmed. Frightened.

Her maidservant, a quiet girl who served with enthusiasm but limited conversational talent, ran to her side, urging Leofstan to send quickly to the palace for a litter. “The babe is coming,” she gabbled, flustered, her arms and hands whirling in anxiety as the busy tavern, attracted by the commotion, began to take an interest.

“The waters have broken, that is all,” Emma countered, sounding more in control than she felt. “I am quite all right.” Another stab of intense pain and she stumbled to her knees, her head bowed, breath coming shallow and fast through her contorted face. “God’s mercy,” she gasped, her hands clutching at her belly. “The babe is coming!”

“Holy Mother! You cannot have the babe out here!” A woman entering from the street thrust her way through the crowd, removing her cloak as she walked. To Leofstan, ordered, “You, bring her into the back,” and without waiting for an answer she opened a rear door and ushered Emma into the privacy of the living place beyond the public tavern.

“This is Leofgifu, my late wife’s sister,” the taverner explained as he hovered, anxious. “She was widowed in the Saint Brice’s Day killings, came down from York to help me when my wife went to God.”

“A Dane?” Leofstan asked, eager to accept a distraction from the Queen’s discomfort. All the same, his eyes were darting around the room, taking in the modest furnishing and the lime-washed walls that displayed a few pieces of weaponry and an embroidered tapestry depicting an í-víking longship, satisfying himself that this private house-place would be suitable, and safe.

“Get you gone!” Leofgifu ordered, waving her hands at the men. “If you want to be of help, fetch me hot water and send to the palace for my Lady’s midwife.” For emphasis she ushered the captain out. “You had best hurry.” Without saying more, she slammed the door on the craning world.

Calm, capable, she guided Emma to the hearth-place, sat her on a stool, and robustly poked fresh life into the embers, sending sparks and a drift of smoke hurtling towards the escape hole in the low, red-tiled roof.

“Let’s unfasten your veil, my dear, and these lacings on your gown. There, child, breathe with the pain, not against it.”

The contraction passing, Emma attempted a wan, brave smile. “You seem to know what you are doing. I thank you for your assistance.” She grimaced as another wave swept through her.

“I’ve birthed six of my own and brought several more nieces and nephews into the world. You had these pains long? Backache, perhaps?” Her accent was different from the normal soft burr of Anglo-Saxon Wessex, some of her words with a distinct hint of the northern Danish dialect.

“I did not sleep for the discomfort,” Emma confided. “I have been restless for several nights now.”

“Ah, birth works its own way. It is often only the first that takes the effort and trouble.” As another pain came, and Leofgifu gently rubbed at Emma’s lower back, then, with the contraction passing, helped remove her gown, boots, and stockings. “There’s not going to be opportunity to get you away before this one makes an appearance.”

“I do not care where I have it!” Emma gasped through gritted teeth, trying to hold down a scream. “I do not care about the damned thing at all. I did not ask for it; I do not want it!”

“Nay, none of us ever do, lass, not ’til the bairn’s safely sucking at our breast. Were it men who had the bearing of them, there’d be precious few of us in the world!”

Emma barely heard. She threw her head back, let the scream out as the pain overwhelmed her, and delivered her child on her hands and knees, down among the fresh straw that Leofgifu had quickly spread, the babe slipping into the world within an hour of the waters breaking. A girl, a daughter. Leofgifu, dressing Emma in one of her own clean under-shifts, settled her into her curtained box bed that nestled in an alcove and handed her the child.

She was beautiful! Large, pale blue eyes, pink, wrinkled skin, soft, downy hair. A face like an angel. She lay in Emma’s cradling arms gazing, unfocused, quiet and content at the face hovering above her. When Emma put her, tentatively, to her breast, she suckled with no fuss or whimpering. Why could Edward’s birth not have been like this? Why could he not have been as utterly, divinely perfect as this child?

“Æthelred will be angry,” Emma said to Leofgifu, who, after wrapping the afterbirth, was disposing of the soiled linen and straw. “He expected a son. A daughter will not be to his liking.”

“He gets what God gives and is grateful for it,” Leofgifu answered tersely. “Now, you hand that bairn to me and get yourself to sleep. If the palace comes meddlin’, I will send them away with a flea in their ear. You will stay here until you’re full rested, King or no King.” She was firm, in command, and her smile was like that of a serene Madonna, loving and warm.

“Leofgifu?” Emma said as she began to drowse. “Would you consider coming with me? I am in much need of a capable companion.”

“I’ll consider your asking, but there is my sister’s husband to think on. It was good of him to take me in when my husband and sons were hanged, and I was left with nothing more than the gown I stood in.”

Her answer was dismissive, but she had already made up her mind. She would accept. Her brother-in-law had his eyes on a new wife, and there would not be room for two women in a small tavern like this. The offer was a gift from God, even with its sting in the tail. She would be living beneath the roof of the man who had ordered the murder of her family.

April 1006—Canterbury

Another Easter. Where did the weeks go? From the morrow, the men of the council of all England, the Witan, would start arriving at Canterbury. Another tedious round of bickering and petulant disagreement about the Danes, taxes, Scotland and Æthelred’s failure to agree a truce with Duke Richard of Normandy.

The next birthing day, Æthelred would reach eight and thirty years of age, not far from a tally of two score years, and he was tired and sick of it all. What pleasure was there in being a King? His mother had revelled in political debate and intrigue; he loathed it.

At least here at Canterbury, unlike many of his palaces, there were separate King’s and Queen’s apartments; he would not have to endure the screaming of that child Edward. Did the boy never cease crying? The girl, Goda, was a sweetheart, quite the most enchanting of all his children, but Æthelred saw little of her. Emma doted on the girl—he had warned her several times to keep herself detached, that come a suitable age, Goda would be sent away into marriage.

“Daughters only have one use for a King,” he had said to Emma, rougher than he had intended, “and that is for useful alliance.”

Emma had paid her husband little heed. She herself had not been wed until her thirteenth year, and none of his elder daughters had husbands. Goda was barely two months old; there was no need to fret so soon about an enforced parting.

Athelstan sat before the hearth-fire, his wet boots stretched towards the blaze of the flames, his hands occupied with twisting three thin strips of leather into a durable plaited thong. Æthelred scowled at him.

“Have you seen to those horses?”

His agile, capable fingers automatically weaving the strands in and out of each other, Athelstan looked up. “Aye. They are comfortably settled.”

“Fed? Dried? I do not want the Reaper coming to any harm.”

Like his father’s, Athelstan’s hair, braes, and boots were wet. Along the wall by the doorway their sodden cloaks had been hung on pegs to dry. The hunting this morning had been going well until the skies had opened and shed heavy rain that looked set for the rest of the day.

“He is muzzle-deep into a warm bran-mash. As with my own fellow, he is dry and content.”

The Reaper was one of Æthelred’s best stallions, sturdy, fourteen-hand, jet-black, and of uncertain temper. Soon after he had acquired him, the animal had viciously lashed out and killed a stable boy by splitting his head open; only those who were competent around horses dared go near him, his reputation as grim as his name.

Æthelred pushed aside his son’s feet and seated himself on another stool; held his chilled hands to the warmth. “I want you to keep close contact with Alfhelm throughout the duration of council.”

Athelstan groaned.

“Am I asking too much of you, boy? Can I not depend on you for anything?”

The response was as irritable. “I have no liking for Ealdorman Alfhelm, nor his damned wife or daughter.”

“You will have a liking for whom I tell you to like! You had best start getting used to the girl, for I have a mind to agree to marriage between the two of you. I need to bind Alfhelm’s loyalty tighter than it is.”

“Then you will need to find another way to do so. I will not wed until I am crowned as King.” Athelstan lashed his curt answer.

Furious, Æthelred stormed to his feet. “You will do as I say!” He jabbed his finger at Athelstan, poking his shoulder. “Nor will you be King. Edward is to follow me.”

Athelstan laughed. “Edward? That fragile mushroom? He’ll not make it past infancy!”

“I was a sickly child—I survived, as will my legitimate son. And there will be others to follow him, others who will take precedence over you.”

Casually, Athelstan rose to his feet, laid the partially plaited thongs across the stool. “Then if Edward lives, and others are born and they are foolish enough to contest my claim, I will have to kill them.” It was not a threat.

“I could as easily order you killed. Here and now,” Æthelred growled, low and menacing, his nostrils pinched, lip curled. Why did conversation with his eldest always disintegrate into argument?

“Then why don’t you?” Leaning forward so that his face was only an inch from his father’s, Athelstan sneered, “I will tell you why. Because I am all you have, and you hate that fact. Edward will not live, and there may not be others.” He took a step back, folded his arms, his expression mocking as he surveyed the area of his father’s manhood. “There’s talk, gossip; I find it most interesting. You lie with all these gutter-slut whores, yet you are rarely presented with their by-blows. Why is that, Papa? Are you getting old? Is your pizzle withering? Is it blunted, of no more use than a broken spear? How can you be sure the brats your Norman whore has borne are yours? Eh?”

His fists bunched, Æthelred leapt up and drove his knuckles at Athelstan’s jaw, but his son was agile, young, and fit. With ease, he tipped his head aside, felt no more than a brush of air across his skin.

“You are no match for me, old man. You never were, and you never will be.” Giving a mocking salute, Athelstan turned away, took his cloak from its peg, and sauntered towards the door.

Æthelred was shaking, enraged and angry, his face suffused purple, his hands white. Through clenched teeth, he spat, “Get out! Get out of my sight, my court, my kingdom!”

“With pleasure, Papa, with great pleasure.” He headed for the stables, shouting for his men to be roused as he walked. As always, Æthelred would take his anger out on someone of less strength, his wife probably. Athelstan felt a passing twinge of pity for her, but she was a wife, and wives were expected to take the brunt of a husband’s storm-raging moods.

Conscience was not an emotion a future King could afford to entertain.

Emma eased herself into the round wooden bathtub. Immersed in the comfort of hot water, she closed her eyes, willed her muscles to relax. Last night she had stood up to Æthelred and had won. Releasing her breath in a long, slow sigh, she felt the tension ease from her body. She had won, God help her! She was seven and ten years of age, and had at last discovered the inner strength of assertive self-preservation and the delicious feeling of power that it gave.

Horses were in the courtyard, the sound of men’s excited voices mingling with the singing of hounds. With the rain ceasing during the night and a clear blue sky overhead, there were several days of missed hunting for them to catch up on. The palace would be depleted of men and noise until evening. A blissful day without the irritating presence of her despicable husband.

Opening her eyes, she reached for a tablet of goose fat, chamomile, and lanolin soap, and began to smooth it over her breasts, arms, and belly. There were white stretch marks across her thighs and above the bush of pubic hair; would they increase in length, she wondered idly, with the carrying of a third child? With a sigh of resignation, said aloud, “I do not want another child.”

“Ah, but a wife cannot refuse her duties to her husband. There is naught we can do but endure.”

Unaware she had spoken her thoughts, Emma looked up at Leofgifu. “And a husband,” she retorted sharply, “should remember his duty to his wife. Is it not sinful to ill-use a woman?”

With that Leofgifu had to agree.

Emma smoothed the washcloth along her right leg. “My husband gets drunk because he cannot bear the weight of his conscience. He shouts because he wants to be heard and no one cares to listen. He fears the night and the dancing shadows, because it is all too easy to hide a dagger blade where there is no light. He lives, day by day, hour by hour, in fear, afraid that one day someone is going to say to his face what troubles his mind. That without his mother he is nothing.”

Filling a small jug with the bathwater, she poured it over her hair and vigorously applied the soap. “He fears Athelstan because, in all but sex, the boy is the image of his grandmother.” She pointed at the last jug of clean, hot water, bent her head for Leofgifu to rinse her hair. Stripping the water from its long length, she stepped from the tub, allowed her friend to swaddle her in the warmed towel, begin to rub her dry.