For a moment she stood frozen, paralysed by terror and indecision. Alric was one of her father’s thegns, and one whom she trusted. But what he was telling her was monstrous! Impossible!
‘Lady, we must fly!’ He turned her about so that she was looking into his face. His familiar, mocking smile was gone, and there was fear writ plain in his wild eyes. ‘Will you trust me?’
And she knew then that she had little choice. She nodded, and at once he snatched her hand and pulled her towards the door. He halted there briefly, glancing to the hall and then the stables before leading her out and around the corner of the building. Two horses stood there, saddled and tethered. He helped her to mount, and as she clutched the reins she heard, through the fog of shock that had settled over her like a shroud, the winding of a distant horn.
‘That will be Eadric and his men returning,’ Alric said. ‘A stroke of luck for us because they’ll have opened the gate. There is no time to lose. Stay close behind me, and do not stop for anything. Are you ready?’
She hesitated, for she was not ready, not for this. She wanted to pelt him with questions, to curse, to howl, but the grim set to his face kept her mute. At her nod he spurred his horse, and she followed him, charging towards the open gate from behind the cover of the church wall.
The few servants in the yard scattered away from them like frightened geese. The gate ward, though, stood his ground at first, waving his hands frantically until he dived sideways to avoid being trampled by Alric’s mount. She followed Alric through the yawning gateway and up a track that led away from the sound of the horn winding yet again, closer now than it had been before.
He led her on, clearly pushing the horses hard to put as much distance as possible between them and, if he had told her true, the pursuit that soon must follow. She could not ask any of the questions that flooded her mind, nor could she still the words that echoed in her ears like a tolling bell: Your father is dead.
It seemed to her that the whole world had just gone mad.
Easter Monday, April 1006
Cookham, Berkshire
Emma stood alone atop the new wooden rampart that had recently transformed the king’s Cookham estate from manor farm to fortified burh. In the grounds below her, tents and pavilions lay in neat rows, lit by firelight and by the shimmer of a half moon that glowed in the clear night sky. From a nearby tent she could hear a woman singing softly, soothing a whimpering child to sleep. In her own apartments, hidden from her sight just now by the massive bulk of the great hall, her own son was tucked into his cradle beside Wymarc’s little Robert. Edward had been sleeping when she’d left him, watched over by Wymarc and Margot and Hilde.
Æthelred’s daughters had been there too, and it was the sight of the two older girls, Edyth and Ælfa, whispering and giggling, their heads drawn close, that had driven her to seek a few moments alone. They had reminded her so of herself and her own sister, Mathilde, when they were children.
And there had been news today of Mathilde – of her death in Normandy. Struck down by a fever at Christmastide, her mother’s letter had said.
She had wept for her sister; Margot – who had guided them both into the world – had grieved with her, rocking her as if she were a child again.
Poor Mathilde. Even as a girl she had been plagued by fevers and agues; half her days, it seemed, spent abed. And now she had lost her final battle.
‘How is it that I did not know?’ she had asked Margot. ‘We were once so close. I should have felt it in my blood and my bones that she had left this world.’
Yet she had not known.
Now she gazed into the night, remembering other times and other places. Just like Æthelred’s daughters, she and Mathilde had been born a year apart, had shared beds, lessons, and duties. They had looked to each other for friendship and counsel; had quarrelled, wept, and forgiven. Until her marriage had separated them for ever.
It was Mathilde who should have come to England and been crowned Æthelred’s queen, for she was the elder. But their mother had deemed otherwise, and so Emma had wed a king and, a year later, Mathilde had become the bride of a Frankish count. Had she ever found happiness in that life? Emma had longed to know, but although she had sent letters, begging for some word from her sister, there had been no reply from the Countess of Blois.
The younger sister’s royal marriage had been too great a blow for the elder sister to forgive. There would be no forgiveness now.
She began to walk, her eyes misted with grief. She halted, though, when she realized that she was not alone, that in front of her a man stood beside the parapet, looking out through an opening towards the dark plain that led to the river.
‘You should go within doors, lady,’ he said. ‘The night is cold, and you would not wish to catch a chill.’
It was Athelstan’s voice that came to her through the darkness, offering advice that she would heed if she were wise. But tonight she was not wise, and the mere sound of his voice drew her to him.
Athelstan, too, she guessed, was weighted with grief.
She had not spoken to him yet of Ecbert’s death, for there had been no opportunity to share a private word. Now, burdened with her own sorrow, she longed just to be near him.
Going to his side, she gazed out towards the rushing, moonlit river, and she drew in a long breath, for her heart ached for both of them.
‘I have wanted to tell you before this,’ she said, ‘how much I grieve for the loss of your brother.’ That grief was bound up now with her sorrow at the death of her sister, but she would not burden him with that news tonight.
‘There is no need for you to speak of it,’ he said. ‘I know what is in your heart.’
She studied his face, the half that she could see just visible in the moonglow. Did he truly know what she felt? His brother Edmund had not believed that she could grieve for Ecbert, and for some time now she had been afraid that Edmund’s distrust of her, like some foul contagion, had spread to Athelstan as well. But in the next moment, when he turned to face her, the look he cast upon her dispelled all doubt.
‘I am not Edmund,’ he said gently, answering the question she had not spoken.
She looked into eyes filled with such sorrow and longing that she was suddenly frightened. How she wanted to reach for him, to draw him into her arms and console him as a sister might.
Yet she dared not offer him that comfort, for it was not a sister’s love that she carried locked within her heart.
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘You are not Edmund. Forgive me for doubting you.’
She very nearly touched him then, nearly placed her hand upon his arm where it lay so close to hers there on the palisade. But she resisted the temptation, turning instead to look out towards the river, knowing that she should go inside as he had urged her, yet unable to bring herself to leave him.
In the darkness she was reminded of another time that they had been alone together – when they had both succumbed to temptation. When desire and passion had overwhelmed wisdom and duty and solemn vows.
She had been shriven of that sin long ago, had promised God that she would sin no more. But the human heart, she had learned, was a thing not easily governed. And although she had thought that tiny bit of her was nothing more than a withered relic locked inside a casket of gold, now she felt it yearning for this man at her side.
After a time it was Athelstan who broke the uneasy silence between them.
‘Your son appears to be thriving,’ he said, ‘and my father does not yet mistrust the boy. I envy him that.’
She heard the pain in his voice, sharp as a knife, and