The Forever Queen (63 page)

“I take great interest in both, madam, but through Earl Erik, who has charge of them.”

“Earl Erik? A pox on Earl bloody Erik! What does he care for my kinsman Thurbrand?”

“The Hold of Holderness? Thurbrand? What in Guds naun, in God’s name, has Thurbrand to do with this?” Cnut spread his arms wide, at a loss. “He is dead.”

Erupting as if she had been a simmering volcano. Ælfgifu was across the room, the expensive mantle dropped and forgotten, kicking at him, raking his cheek with her nails, hissing and spitting, cursing. Only his longer arms held her off, for the full spate of her fury was a match to equal his strength.

“Yes, he is dead! Murdered! Stabbed through the heart, a dagger in his guts, butchered by a madman who has had no reprimand, no punishment for the deed! A man who swaggers in his freedom as if he is royal-born and God-shriven! Thurbrand’s murder was done by Uhtred of Bernicia’s son at Erik’s bidding! And you have had nothing to say or do on the matter!”

“I have had the pressing matter of Thorkell’s treachery to deal with.”

Wrenching free, Ælfgifu ducked beneath his arm and slapped his face, drawing blood with her rings. “My kinsman was murdered nigh on three years past. You have had more than enough time to avenge his death!”

Cnut shrugged, pulled on his last boot. “General gossip, my dear, gives the organising of it to you.”

“I have consistently contested that slur.”

Dabbing at the seeping blood, Cnut inspected his finger for the amount. A few spots, nothing more. “The rumour was that you and Thurbrand fell out.” Cnut put his face closer to hers. “Displease you in bed, did he?”

She slapped him again.

Cnut was losing patience; he did not have to come here and put up with her childish tantrums. “Thurbrand,” he snapped, “got himself into a brawl. He could easily have sidestepped it, but, no, he had to add to the taunts. What did he expect? A pat on the head for his insults, as if he were a good dog?” He drew breath, lifted his cloak from the wall peg, and swung it to his shoulder. “Thurbrand was deliberately provoking, and I agree with the rumour; he was not clever enough to think of its doing on his own. Someone prodded him from behind.”

He pushed the nine-inch-long pin, with a head of gem-encrusted silver the size of his clenched fist, into the folds of the cloak to secure it at his shoulder. “I did not like the way Thurbrand dealt with Uhtred’s killing. That, too, was your doing. Now the son has slain his father’s murderer, and no doubt the blood feud will dribble on through another generation. I hold nothing against the lad. Perhaps he will come for you next.”

“You bastard.”

“That I might be, but you will have either to accept it or find yourself another man to keep you and your brats fed with fresh meat and clothed in silks and furs.” He turned on his heel and marched from the chamber, deliberately leaving the door wide so anyone in the hall beyond might see Ælfgifu’s state of undress, knowing most of them would be wide-eyed ogling.

She snatched up the sable and covered herself, ran after him. “Cnut! Do not go yet, my Lord! It is several hours ’til you must sail. Please, stay with me?”

Cnut felt like hurling an insult, telling her to go choke on her own hatching plots. Instead, without pausing, he raised a hand, called, “After I’ve dealt with Thorkell to my satisfaction I will be back. Perhaps.”

The two boys, he noted, were fighting on the far side of the hall, punching each other in a way that was not a friendly bout of brother against brother but with all the ferocity of meaning harm. Bugger them. Let them maim each other, then he’d not have the added burden of what to do with them when they grew into more than boys.

7 June 1023—Thorney Island

Harthacnut, three and a half years old, could not quite figure out this thing called death. Its concept was baffling, and it drew even more peculiar reactions from the grown-ups. No one had bothered with those rats Uncle Godwine had destroyed last month down at Bosham, yet here everyone was wailing and weeping over the death of that fusty old Archbishop Wulfstan, and going on about moving the bones of another Archbishop, Alfheah, who had died years ago. What was the problem? Papa wanted the bones taken to the cathedral in Canterbury; the people of London wanted them kept where they were. No one had made this great fuss when Papa had ordered the removal of those monster’s bones, found when they had started digging the foundations of his church at Ashingdon. Harthacnut liked that story and asked his father to recount it often.

“I had decided on where I wanted my church to be, up on the hill. All the men came with mattocks, picks, and shovels to start clearing the land marking the pattern of the church, to build the start of the walls, and as one man drove his spade in, there was a crunch and a skull appeared. A gape-mouthed skull with huge eye sockets, long snout, and sharp pointed teeth, a creature that, had it been alive, would have ripped the throat out of a man. Well, they kept on digging and found more: the backbone, the ribs, legs, feet, claws—a whole skeleton of a great beast longer than this hall!”

“What did they do with the bones, Papa?”

“Oh, they were the remains of a devil creature. The men called in the priest, Stigand, and he organised the burning of the thing and the blessing of the ground.”

Harthacnut delighted in picturing the monster biting the heads off people. Perhaps the moving of Alfheah was a problem because he had been a holy man and did not need burning and blessing? Oh, it was all most odd!

And then there was the added thing of Earl Erik dying. Harthacnut disliked him as much as he had Wulfstan. Both had been wont to lecture him: “A son of a King would not do that, Harthacnut,” or, “Try to behave as an Ætheling should, Harthacnut.” A frowsy pair; the boy was glad to be rid of them. The only interesting part was the manner of Erik’s dying.

He had been returning from attending the burial of Wulfstan, and his horse had stumbled. Erik had somersaulted off and snapped his leg, which had turned bad. The surgeon had to saw the leg off, the blood had fountained everywhere, and Erik had bled to death.

“Will there be any blood?” he asked his mother, who was concentrating on reading a parchment by the poor glow of a rushlight.

“What do you mean, blood? Of course there will be no blood, you silly lamb.” Completely misunderstanding, she laid the parchment aside and with an indulgent chuckle knelt beside her son, her arms going maternally around him. “The tomb is to be opened and the remains transferred into a coffin. When we rebury the Archbishop at Canterbury, I promise there will be nothing nasty for you to see, my little skat.”

Harthacnut squirmed out of her embrace, scowling, Emma taking his expression to indicate his boyish pride at not wanting to be coddled by his mother. In fact, he was cross that he would not be able to see any gore for himself.

“What is wrong with the boy now?” Cnut said gruffly, entering the room and throwing his cloak aside; missing the coffer, it slid to the floor. It had been a bad day. He unbuckled his sword, added it to the crumpled cloak, sat on a stool, and held his foot aloft for his servant to pull the boot off. “What’s the puckered face for, boy? If the wind should change, you could be caught like that forever.”

“He is anxious about the ceremonies here at London and Canterbury,” Emma answered coolly. The relationship between her and Cnut had been strained this last six weeks since his return from Denmark. Oh, how happiness was so easily spoilt! He had recounted very little of the expedition, save that Thorkell had no chance of raising a full fleet to come against England, although, to ensure it, Cnut had been forced to leave the majority of his own scyp fyrd in Danish waters with orders to keep regular patrol and a watchful eye. A matter of weeks, maybe a couple of months, and Thorkell would capitulate, bow to the pressure. All it needed was the patience to wait and the financial resources to pay the English fleet to remain vigilant. A gall that rubbed, for Thorkell had predicted Cnut would need to rely on Englishmen to sort Danish problems.

Not surprisingly, London had refused to pay the higher taxes demanded, the merchants’ indignation fuelled by a London-wide increase in anti-Dane feeling that had begun to swell against the King and his men, who, Londoners claimed, spent more months in Denmark than in England. Denmark and its troubles, whether raised by Thorkell the Tall or What’s-His-Name the Short, were no business of London. Denmark was for the King to sort out from his Danish funds and nothing else. All puff and wind, of course, with the basic point of Cnut’s strategy, to protect London, being deliberately obscured. Petty-minded people causing petty-minded squabbles. Ah, but it had ever been so in London, for the merchant guilds were a law unto themselves, no matter which King set his backside on the throne.

Because of the defiance Cnut had been angry, his annoyance heightened by the less than enthusiastic welcome home that he had received from his wife. Emma had been made aware of his tryst with Ælfgifu, and although she saw no reason to let him know she had an efficient network of spies, neither was she going to allow him to pull a hood over her eyes. Had the Northampton Bitch been a bawdy-house whore, she would not have cared a bent copper penny, providing she did not carry the pox, but Ælfgifu was an ongoing, annoying problem, with or without a sexually transmitted disease.

Both situations, London and his wife, were beginning to wear thin for Cnut.

“Well, there is now another matter for him to worry on. That old crone has been preaching her evil curses again.”

Emma lifted her head sharply, concerned.

With the second boot removed, Cnut examined a hole worn in the toe of his woollen sock. “Apparently, unless I leave Archbishop Alfheah where he is, my skin shall erupt into pustules and my vitals shrivel, black and rancid.” He laughed nervously.

“She is a hag, Cnut, pay no heed to her. She professes to desire a man of God to remain undisturbed, yet calls on the devil to secure it? I think not!”

“That is what I concluded. I had her arrested; she is to be executed on the morrow at sunrise.” Feeling happier, Cnut beckoned his servant to fetch him wine.

Emma ushered Harthacnut off to play with his wooden soldiers, said vehemently, “She is Satan’s witch. The Church should be dealing with her, not you.”

“I have made it quite clear that any Londoner who protests at her punishment shall be deemed as being in league with her and face charges of heresy themselves. I will not be overruled in this matter, no more than I will over the decision to reinter Alfheah’s relics.”

“So the transfer goes ahead on the morrow?”

“It does. After the witch has been burnt.”

Playing with his toy soldiers, Harthacnut’s attention to the adult talk had been waning, but his ears pricked at the incredulous gasp that left his mother’s mouth.

“Burnt? Alive? Are you jesting? There has never been such a manner of public execution before.”

Cnut raised his goblet in a mocking half-salute as a concession to her observation. “We have never had to condemn a devil’s whore of a witch before. I suggested the Bishop of London choose the way of it, seeing as this woman is one of his own parishioners. He may protest loudly about an Archbishop’s bones, but he can see the danger of someone casting incantations on the steps of his own cathedral, which is where she was standing when she cursed me.”

Picking up the scrolled parchment and reseating herself, Emma shook her head, worried. “Will there be trouble?”

“Possibly. Probably, but not with the witch. London will revel in her burning.” Cnut drank deeply of his wine, watched his wife with half-lidded eyes from above the rim of his goblet. She was a striking woman, not pretty, but handsome in her own way. She was elegant in her dress and manner of walking, was always immaculate, always polite, never coarse or foul-mouthed in public. Rarely in private come to that.

“I queried the wisdom of her execution being set for the morrow, but it was an argument I could not win, for it was pointed out to me that I would be wise to have her done with before the tomb is opened, in case Satan has been heeding her blasphemies. The fire will be built as soon as the tide ebbs; she’ll be burnt on the river shore beside London Bridge, and then, when the river rises, the water will take her and cleanse the area. A double death, you see, burning and drowning, both being methods apparently prescribed by God for those such as she.”

They lapsed into silence. Glancing at her letter again, Emma read a few of the words, found she could not concentrate.

“A letter?” Cnut asked after a while, indicating the parchment. “From anyone interesting?” He played a smile on his mouth, not wanting to appear intrusive or possessive. Treading on hot coals, lest he break this apparent truce and she should snap his head off again.

“It is from my brother, Richard,” she said, the quiver in her fingers belying the rigidity of her voice. She faltered, continued, her eyes lifting to stare at Cnut, the pain of need so suddenly, dreadfully obvious. “He has arranged for my daughter, for Goda, to wed Drogo, Count of Amiens and the Vexin.”

Cnut raised an eyebrow, impressed and unconcerned. Drogo could be of no possible threat to England. Now, if it were one of Æthelred’s boys marrying into an area where an army could be raised…ah, but the Duke would not be so stupid as to follow that route. “An honourable and ideal match,” he said truthfully.

The choke made Emma’s cry falter as she flung the parchment away. “It is a decision I should have been a party to! She is my daughter!” Emma buried her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving, her entire body trembling. Instantly, Cnut was beside her, with Leofgifu hovering, concerned, nearby.

“I know nothing of Drogo,” Cnut confessed, “but through my father I knew of his. A good man, so I have heard.” He embraced her, brought her close, his strong hand firm on her back, allowing her to weep privately into his tunic.

“Look at it this way,” he said, practically, after a moment, “had you been the arranger, would you have approved the match?”

Bleakly Emma half shrugged in reluctant agreement.