The Forever Queen (23 page)

Whether it was a true statement or not, she did not care. The cheer they rewarded her with counted for more worth than accuracy.

“Will we see or hear them first?” Emma asked Godric, standing beside her. A reliable man, experienced and of practical sense.

“In this mist it is hard to tell, ma’am. If they are marching in open formation, we shall probably hear their approach first, or they may choose to come close with stealth, in which case we shall not know they are here until Swein Forkbeard launches his attack.” He glanced over his shoulder at the preparations being completed below. Buckets of water and sand made ready to douse fire arrows, hides being soaked with water for the same purpose. Fire was always the fear, with timber walls and reed-thatched roofs; only the Minsters, Old and New, the nunnery church, and the town’s arched gateways were of stone. The gates themselves, two inches thick, studded with iron nails and bolts, were of seasoned oak.

“Do you think it true they have fire-throwing engines, battering rams, and siege towers with them?” she asked.

“You are remarkably acquainted with the weapons of war, Lady,” Godric said, adding with honesty, “I cannot say. I doubt they would have dragged such stuff up to Reading and the Ridge Way, but there are plenty of trees a’tween there and here, and the Danes are no less skilled with woodcraft and the building of necessities than are we.”

It was better to talk, it took the edge off the waiting.

“My father and brother often discussed tactics; I found it interesting to listen.” What would Richard make of laying siege to a town like Winchester? Emma wondered as she gazed into the crawl of eerie whiteness. Under Richard’s command, Winchester would fall within hours. Was this Swein of Denmark as capable as her brother?

“There! Beyond the trees—look!” A young lad, no more than fourteen summers of age, pointed to a distant copse of birch. His helmet was too big for him, his chain-linked mail too loose—his father’s armour, Emma wondered, or an uncle’s? All the men and boys of the town had turned out to defend their own, dressed for war as well they could. Most had nothing except leather over-tunics or aprons. Many did not carry weapons beyond the everyday tools of pitchforks and chopping axes. Few outside those who served within the fyrd possessed the mighty death-bringer axes. Men to Emma’s right lifted their heads and, on Godric Osgodsson’s command, raised their bows, notched an arrow.

“Hold hard, lads,” Godric growled, raising his arm, palm outspread. “We do not want to be killing them all too soon.”

One of the men grinned, lowered his bow. “We wait ’til we see the whites of their eyes, eh, sir?”

“Na, mate,” his companion chided, “the coloured part of their eyes—more like the centre mark on our practice targets!”

“Aye, you’re right there—an’ the three of us can hit that every shot!”

A general flurry of laughter, a shifting of position as everyone straightened, straining to look where the boy had pointed.

The mist was moving, wavering, rippling outwards like the wash of a boat. No noise, no sound, just the mist rolling, being pushed aside. Then it came, a steady thrum of rhythm, the stamp of feet, the creak of leather, the jingle of metal. From out of the trees covering Saint Giles Hill, rising up through the mist, men appeared carrying banners that lay limp and unwavering in the damp, heavy air. It did not matter; no one waiting on those Winchester ramparts needed to see the banners unfurled to know one of them was the black raven of Denmark and the golden Hammer of Thor.

Many of the Danes rode ponies, their winter coats thick, soaked with sweat, muddied, and tired. Ponies stolen from farmsteadings, inns, and fields. Several of them were lame, near collapse.

What had Emma expected of Swein’s army? Great giants? Godlike warriors? Proud men brandishing their weapons, swaggering in their arrogance? These Danes, emerging from the track, running under the steep wooded slope of the hill, rode two abreast, those without a mount trudging in between in twos and threes, some holding on to a pony’s mane or tail. They were indeed tall men; they wore armour and carried shield, sword, and axe, but they were of no greater stature than the men of Normandy. They looked no stronger than some of these waiting, expectant, and ready up here along the top of Winchester’s walls.

As they marched nearer, following the river, taking the track called Chesil Street which ran along the far bank, she saw more detail, the smaller things. Some were wounded, some with arms in slings or with bloodied tunics or leaning on rough-made crutches. Many had grimed faces and damaged mail, cracked shields and broken spears. This was no rampaging army, no vast, unstoppable force! These were tired men returning the quickest way possible to their ships. God in Heaven, and Æthelred was letting them pass unmolested? If the fyrd had been called together, had been waiting for them here on this Winchester road…

Drawing level with the walls, a man riding a tired chestnut pony drew rein, his hand going up to halt the column. Impetuous, his finger twitching, one of the men close to Emma let loose an arrow. It sailed outwards, lonely in its solitary flight, arched down and thrummed, harmless, into the cold, silver-grey of the river.

“You ought to withdraw,” Godric whispered, his hand on Emma’s elbow, urging her to step back.

“If our arrows cannot reach them, then they cannot reach me,” she answered, practical, calm.

The man on the chestnut was reaching up to his head, removing his war cap, his gaze studying the walls and the men arrayed along the top. He had no need to identify himself; from his stance, his very presence and quality of armour Emma knew him to be Swein Forkbeard. Did he realise who she was? That he had the Queen of England standing before him?

“Fetch my banner up here, quickly,” Emma ordered suddenly. “I would have him know that a Queen of England is not afeared to outface him.”

A boy fetched it, running down the steps, jumping the last three. He hurtled through the archway into the inner courtyard of the palace, snatched up the banner and raced back to the wall, almost tripping as the material unravelled and caught between his legs.

“You have no need to fear us this time, people of Winchester!” Swein’s voice boomed, in English, across the river, hitting the town with all the might of a mangonel. “We return to our ships with the geld your King Æthelred has obligingly paid. You may go back to your hearth-fires, but I would advise you to keep a sharp edge on your blades, for I will not be gone long from Engla Lond.”

The boy reached Emma’s side, and she ordered the banner unfurled, a man grabbing for the linen, spreading wide the embroidered emblem of a crowned, rampant lioness.

“I do not fear you, Swein Forkbeard. The blood that runs through my veins is more noble than yours.”

“My Lady,” Forkbeard answered with a laugh and a slight bow, “I was not aware you were resident. Had I known, I might have decided to take you with me back to Denmark, but as it is, I must pass, for the tide awaits.”

“Step foot inside my city, Forkbeard, and you will be going nowhere except to Valhalla.”

“An honourable place, ma’am, but as I have no wish to go there quite yet, I bid you farewell.” He laughed again, saluted with a careless gesture, and returned his war cap to his head. Kicking his pony forward, he spoke to the person riding beside him, who turned his face to stare up at Emma.

Not a man, a boy, with fair hair spilling beneath his cap and no hint of hair on his upper lip or chin.

Emma called out in her astonishment, “Do the í-víking fight with boys now, then, Forkbeard? Do you not have grown men to do your butchering?”

The boy rode proud, his fingers curled around the double-handed axe haft that was slung, almost lazily, across his shoulder. Returned her contemptuous gaze.

“I am no boy,” he answered, his voice carrying clearly in the quiet mist. “I am Cnut Sweinsson.”

Godric Osgodsson frowned, spoke softly to Emma. “I heard rumour that Forkbeard brought his younger son with him. He would be what age?” Godric turned to look at some of the faces clustered round, seeking advice.

“Almost twelve, sir. Swein’s eldest is fifteen; Cnut would be eleven or twelve.”

“And he lets the boy fight?” Emma asked, incredulous.

“I doubt it.” Godric shook his head. “He would be with the baggage most part, I would warrant, but how else does a King train a Prince for warfare? Not by leaving him at home to kick his heels and make mischief.” He did not add that there were plenty of eleven-year-old boys—aye, and younger—swelling the ranks of men lined along the top of these walls.

With the last of the Danish column disappearing southwards into the mist and the direction of their moored ships at Southampton, Emma forgot the boy. She lifted her skirts and whisked away down the steps, her face set in annoyed fury.

As humiliations went, Swein of Denmark had superseded all other degradations. He had deprived Æthelred of wealth and honour and was walking away with a cocksure swagger. So Æthelred had paid the demand of six and thirty thousand pounds of silver? Had allowed the Danish army to march, virtually unchallenged, through more than sixty miles of English land and had permitted them to flaunt their arrogance before his Queen? How dare he! The Danish army had been nothing more than a hotchpotch of tired, ragged men who wanted to go home. Who in all Hell’s name had advised Æthelred to pay the geld and remain hidden in London?

Oh, she knew the answer to that! Eadric Streona, new-made Ealdorman of all Mercia and recently married husband to the King’s bastard daughter. God in His Heaven, if she knew how to fight, she would dress herself in armour and lead her own army against that damned, poxed Danishman and his son. Knew for a certainty that Æthelred would not.

17 March 1008—Woodstock

They say a man was cured of leprosy just by kneeling before his tomb!”

“And a woman, unable to bear children for the entirety of her ten-year marriage, became with child a month after prostrating herself there.”

Shaftesbury Abbey, Emma thought to herself, turning slightly more towards the lamplight, her back to the chattering women, has much to answer for.

She was not entirely convinced that the bones of a dead man, who had been no more immortal than any of them while alive, could be responsible for the curing of all ills. And yet—she fashioned three more stitches into the chair cover she was embroidering—and yet there had been these miracles at Shaftesbury, almost from the very day Æthelred had ordered his half-brother’s remains to be transferred there seven years past. The tedium was that they went through this selfsame routine every year at the approach of the eighteenth day of March. Æthelred dreaded the anniversary of his brother’s murder, and Emma too was beginning to feel apprehensive.

Had Edward been a saint in life, a holy man, or, at the very least, liked if not loved, then she could understand these beliefs growing up around the tomb, but he had been a boy, and a foolhardy one at that. What did God gain from permitting him this accession to martyrdom and allowing his soul to perform such perfect acts?

“A blind man was able to see, his sight restored while he was there, kneeling in prayer.”

“I have heard that a woman who was desperate for a son to be born to her, took her newborn daughter and left her on the tomb steps. In the morning she had changed into a boy!”

“Mayhap you ought to take yourself along to Shaftesbury, Judith,” Emma said, folding away her needlework, “and pray for Edward the Martyr to grant you an ounce of common sense.”

The women laughed, Emma, after a moment’s uncertain hesitation, joining in. It was not their fault she was in this wretched, melancholy mood. Not their fault that she dreaded her husband’s bouts of unyielding temper.

The door opened, the children’s nurse creeping in as if she were about to enter a dragon’s den. Wymarc was a conscientious girl but short on discipline with the children, Emma thought, with young Edward in particular. On the face side of the coin, at least the boy did not whine and grizzle as much now.

“If you please, ma’am.” Wymarc bobbed a reverence. “The children are settled into bed, ready for you to bid them a good night.”

Emma managed to make her smile appear genuine. “Thank you, girl; I shall be there presently.”

Leofgifu had found Wymarc in the Winchester slave market. A red-haired, Breton child of five and ten years of age, with eyes as large as broth bowls and the sweet voice of a summer lark. Leofgifu was an excellent judge of character and, after a few pertinent questions, had purchased the girl. Wymarc had come from a large family of a dozen children, she being the next eldest, but when her father had died, there had been no way to pay the rent for their farm, and the landlord had thrown them out. Her mother had taken the younger children to relations in the south of Brittany; for the four eldest, slavery or starvation had been the only options. Wymarc’s fortune had come when the slave master brought her to Winchester on the day Leofgifu was searching for someone to help care for the royal children.

“Little Goda is teething, I believe,” Wymarc added shyly, uncertain whether to speak. “She is fretful, and her cheeks are sorely red-spotted.”

“It is the great pity that children are not born with teeth,” Emma answered, rising from her seat. She was always reluctant to tend this pointless nightly ritual, but bidding children good night appeared to be a mother’s expected duty. “A full set of teeth would save us all many sleepless nights.” She flashed Wymarc a smile of encouragement, was rewarded with an amused chuckle.

“Aye, my Lady, but t’would be painful for the suckling nurse!”

The children’s quarters were tucked in the side of the palace complex in a separate lean-to building behind the royal apartments. Woodstock was a rambling, scattered arrangement of timber buildings with a central hall. It was as if each successive generation of Kings had added his own contribution of servants’ quarters, stabling, or kennels without caring to remove anything that already existed. Æthelred preferred Woodstock to all his estates; Emma loathed it, but then he cherished his hunting and she did not. Another nuisance, as with his Thorney Island palace, Woodstock could not boast of cobbling or paving to courtyard and pathway, the place was awash with mud. No bother to the men, who cared nothing for the state of boots and hose, but for women, with their finely made gowns and trailing sleeves, mud was a dreadful nuisance.