Patricia Bracewell - The Price of Blood

Clasping her hands together to stop their trembling, she pressed them against her mouth and shut her eyes.

‘God have mercy,’ she whispered, then looked to Wymarc. ‘I must go to the king.’

Her thoughts flew back to that moment on the hill above the manor and the foreboding that had shaken her. Had she sensed some trouble in the air then – a portent of loss greater than she could bear to imagine?

Sweet Virgin , she prayed again, let it not be Athelstan .

She took long, slow breaths and walked with a measured step to disguise the fear that clutched at her heart, to try not to think of how wretched the world would be if Athelstan were not in it.

Nodding to the guards at the entrance to the great hall, she slipped inside. Torches flamed in their sockets along the walls and a fire roared in the central pit, but the vast chamber, which should have been busy with preparations for the evening meal, was all but empty. Æthelred sat on the dais in his great chair with Edmund kneeling before him. The king was bent forward, his silver-streaked, tawny hair contrasting with his son’s darker, dishevelled locks. The king’s steward, Hubert, stood to one side, dictating something to a scribe; a gaggle of servants hovered nearby looking frightened.

Filled with dread, Emma walked silently and swiftly to the dais and sank into the chair placed beside the king’s. Æthelred did not even mark her entrance, so absorbed was he in what Edmund was saying. Edmund’s face, she saw with despair, was wet with tears, and she forced herself to listen to him in silence, swallowing the urgent query that was on her lips.

‘It came on suddenly, and he was in agony from the start,’ he said in a voice laced with grief. ‘The leeches gave him a purgative, but that only seemed to make him worse. They bled him, to try to release the evil humours, but even I could see that they thought it was futile. A corruption had taken hold inside, they said, and only a miracle would spare him. They tried to dose him with poppy juice to ease his pain, but what little he swallowed he spewed back again. It was as if some devil would not allow him any succour, would not even let him sleep. His suffering was terrible, my lord. He did not deserve such torment.’

Edmund’s voice broke, but he took a breath, mastered his grief, and went on.

‘On the second morning the bishop arrived with the relics of Saint Erkenwald and a clutch of priests. They prayed for a miracle, but by midday I was begging God to put an end to his agony.’ He drew a heavy breath. ‘That prayer, at least, was answered. I am come to you straight from Ecbert’s deathbed, my lord. Athelstan insisted that you hear it from one of us and no other.’

Emma dropped her head into her hands, unable to keep back her tears. She mourned for Ecbert, and she grieved for Athelstan, who had lost his dearest companion. Yet even as she wept for pity, she murmured a prayer of thanks. Athelstan was alive.

‘Why do you weep, lady?’ Edmund’s harsh voice flayed her. ‘Your own son thrives, does he not? And Ecbert was nothing to you.’

She looked into the grief-ravaged face of her stepson, unsurprised by his words. At seventeen he was a grown man, but even as a youth he had regarded her with resentment and suspicion.

‘I am no monster, Edmund,’ she said. ‘I grieve for Ecbert as I would for the death of any of my husband’s children.’

‘Ecbert would not want your—’

‘Edmund.’ Æthelred’s voice silenced his son.

For once Emma was grateful for the rigid control that the king wielded over his children. She had no wish to wrangle with Edmund. Not today.

The king was gazing into the middle distance, his eyes unfocused and empty.

‘On what day,’ he asked, ‘and at what hour did Ecbert die?’

‘Two days ago,’ Edmund replied. ‘Shrove Tuesday, just before vespers.’

Æthelred closed his eyes, and the hand that he lifted to his brow trembled. Emma could only guess at what he was feeling. Anguish for the suffering of his son? Anger at a pitiless God? She wanted to comfort him, and she would have reached out to touch his arm, but his next words checked her.

‘I beg you, lady, to leave us to our grief. Send my daughters to me. I would tell them of their brother’s death.’

It was as if he had struck her a physical blow – a terse reminder that she was an outsider, a foreign queen who could be beckoned or dismissed at the king’s whim, like a bit of carved wood on a game board.

Without another word, she left the hall.

Grieving and wounded, she returned to her apartments and, as the king had bid her, sent his daughters to him. Then she drew her son from his nurse’s lap. Edward nuzzled contentedly against her shoulder, happily fingering the thick, pale braid of her hair. As she paced restlessly about the room, finding comfort in her son’s warm, milky scent, Edmund’s words and the venomous look he had turned upon her played in her head like a bad dream.

His anger, she feared, was directed as much towards her son as towards her. She had watched it grow and fester for more than a year now – ever since Æthelred had named Edward heir to his throne. In disinheriting the sons borne to him by his first wife, the king had pitted all her stepsons against her child. Brothers against brother; a host of Cains against her tiny Abel.

Athelstan, for her sake she suspected, kept his brothers’ resentment in check. But how long could he continue to do so?

Royal brothers had been murdered before this for the sake of a crown. Æthelred himself had been but ten summers old when his half-brother, King Edward, had been slain. No one had been punished for that murder. Instead, certain men close to the newly crowned young Æthelred had prospered.

How many powerful men, she mused uneasily, had interests that would be ill served if her son should one day take the throne? How many of the elder æthelings’ supporters could be called on to dispose of a troublesome half-brother for the benefit of the sons of Æthelred’s first wife?

The thought turned her limbs to liquid, and she had to sit down. She rested her cheek against Edward’s bright silken hair and held him close. He was her treasure, her whole reason for being. His life was in her hands, and Ecbert’s death was a reminder that even for a royal son, life was perilous.

‘I promise you,’ she whispered, ‘that I will protect you from all your enemies.’ Then she thought of Athelstan, alone in London and grieving for his brother, and she added, ‘Even those whom I love.’

March 1006

Calne, Wiltshire

The next day dawned sunless, heavy with the threat of rain. As Æthelred performed the prescribed rituals of mourning for his dead son, his mind was filled with thoughts as black as the sullen skies – thoughts that sprang not from grief, but from rage.

Grief, he told himself, was a sentiment of little use to him. Better to howl than to weep. Better to channel his fury towards a pitiless God and the vengeful shade of a murdered king than to mourn for the innocent dead.

Both heaven and hell, he was certain, had cursed him – the bitter fruit of ancient sins. He had witnessed the murder of his brother, the king; had raised neither voice nor hand to prevent it; had taken a crown that should not have been his. For these wrongs his brother’s cruel shadow continued to torment him, despite all that he had done to lay the loathsome spirit to rest.

Ecbert’s death was yet another sign that Edward’s hand – or God’s – was raised against him. Shrines and churches, prayers and penance had not bought him peace. He was still dogged by misfortune.

Now he understood that the price of forgiveness was far too high. God and Edward demanded his kingdom and his crown, and that was a price he would not pay.