looping string. Any move that his father made against Ælfhelm might split the kingdom. Any action that he himself might take to avert such a split would add to the suspicions his father was already nursing against him. Any hint of discord between the king, his sons, and his thegns would bring Viking raiders to their shores like wolves drawn to a bleating lamb, and that might well destroy England altogether.
Below him, the woman seated beside the fire did not look up, but she must know that he was here. He could not shake off the sensation that she had called him – that she had some answer to give him, if he could but ask the right question.
That, too, made him afraid.
Above him the sky darkened, then brightened again, as clouds drifted across the face of the sun.
The sky was of two minds, he thought, just as he was. But he’d come this far already, three days’ ride in the wrong direction.
So he swung off his horse and led it down the hill, leaving it to graze while he walked into the circle to take his place across the fire from the seeress. As they regarded each other for a long, silent moment, it crossed his mind that she had suffered some wasting sickness, for her face was thinner than he remembered, her nose as sharp and pointed as a merlin’s beak, and her skin creased with lines that had not been there two winters ago. He glanced past her, to the daub and wattle hut that was her dwelling. When last he was here he had left behind a purse of silver, but she had clearly not spent it on her comforts.
Finally she broke the silence.
‘Twice before this you have come to me, lord, and twice you left here doubting the truth of the words I spoke to you. Will this time be any different?’
How did she know that he had doubted her? Perhaps it was not such a difficult thing to divine, though. No man wished to believe in a future that was bleak.
‘Mayhap it depends on the question asked and the answer given,’ he replied.
She nodded. ‘Ask your question, then, lord, and I will give what answer I can.’
He paused, and as he looked into her eyes the question that he would pose came to him at last.
‘Is it possible for a man to change his fate?’
The black eyes flashed at him, or perhaps he was merely seeing the flames reflected there.
‘Every man’s wyrd is set, my lord, for it is the fate of every man to die. That end is inescapable.’
‘That end, yes,’ he agreed. ‘But there is far more to any man’s life than just the leaving of it. Is there only one path that a man must follow to his life’s end?’
‘One path only,’ she said. ‘Yet not every step upon that path is carved in stone.’
It seemed to him that her words were a riddle set within a maze.
‘Then how,’ he asked, ‘can anyone read a man’s future?’
She dropped her gaze from his, frowning into the fire.
‘The future of any man’s life is not a path that runs along a plain, my lord, but one that follows a trail over mountains and chasms that are hidden in mist. Sometimes, for a brief spell, the mist clears, and one who has the gift can see the way. Can you change the path? No. But no one, not even the most gifted, can perceive at a glance every valley or every mountaintop that a life will follow, nor every other life path that crosses it along the way.’ She looked into his eyes again. ‘You have not asked me about the thing that concerns you the most, I think. There is something far greater than the fate of a single life that troubles you.’
That much was true. It was not his wyrd that mattered, or his father’s. It was the fate of England that he would know.
He made no answer, but she spoke as if she had read his thought.
‘Then I will give you this answer to the question that you do not ask. Whether the thing that you desire is within your reach or not, failure is only a certainty if you do not strive to grasp what you would have.’
So. He must do whatever he could to preserve the kingdom, no matter the cost. Yet she would not promise him success, only certain failure if he did not make the attempt. What, he wondered, would be the price that he must pay?
‘And if I give you my hand now and ask you to tell me my future, what would you say to me?’
She dropped her eyes to the flames again, and her voice was a mere whisper.
‘What I would say to any man, for I have searched the fire and smoke again and again these many months, and what I see is ever the same.’
He waited for her to speak, and when she seemed disinclined to go on, he prodded her.
‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘What is it that you see?’
She lifted her gaze to his, and he thought she tried to smile, but her eyes were filled with tears.
‘I see fire,’ she said, ‘and smoke. There is never anything else.’
April 1006
Cookham, Berkshire
The imprisonment of Ælfhelm’s sons led to angry clashes between Æthelred and his ministers. Throughout Easter Week while the council sessions continued, Emma observed the discord and the king’s response to it with growing dismay. Æthelred went nowhere without a ring of trusted warriors close about him, but the presence of armed men in the hall merely added to the tension that charged the air like lightning about to strike.
She was not present on the day that Lord Eadric of Shrewsbury strode into the hall with a dozen men at his back to report that Ealdorman Ælfhelm was dead. She heard about it soon enough, though. His bald statement set the court buzzing. The king declared that Ælfhelm had been punished for his treachery against the Crown, and immediately ordered Ælfhelm’s sons sent in chains to the fortress at Windsor. For safekeeping, he insisted.
This led to more unrest among the men of the witan. They demanded an accounting of Ælfhelm’s crimes and the crimes of his sons, but the king steadfastly refused to enumerate them. It was enough, he claimed, that he knew what they were, and even his bishops could not move him to say any more. At this Lord Æthelmær of the Western Shires grew so irate that he retired from the king’s council altogether, saying he would rather spend the rest of his life in an abbey serving God than continue paying court to an unjust king.
Emma had met with the man and tried to dissuade him from taking a step so drastic and irrevocable. He had listened to her arguments with grave respect and courtesy, but in the end she could not sway him from his decision. The next morning he had left Cookham with his sons and more than fifty warriors beside. The king never even tried to placate Æthelmær and sent no word of Godspeed, but Emma had watched the company ride away with misgiving.
And all the while there was an endless flurry of rumours about Elgiva, who seemed to have disappeared from the earth altogether. Some claimed that she was dead, but Emma gave those stories no credence. Elgiva was alive, she was certain. The Lady of Northampton had somehow slipped whatever snare Eadric had set for her, and that had merely goaded him into redoubling his efforts to capture her. He’d even sent men to the convents that were scattered throughout England – a fruitless endeavour in Emma’s opinion, despite tales that Elgiva had been seen at Polesworth, at Shaftesbury, and at Wilton. Elgiva, she knew, would never willingly place herself within the confining walls of a nunnery.
She had said as much to Wymarc as they walked together one morning beside the river. Pausing for a moment to look up, into the wide blue expanse that was uncharacteristically free of clouds, she had wondered aloud, ‘Where under this English sky is Elgiva? And what is she doing?’
‘She’s a temptress, isn’t she?’ Wymarc had replied. ‘She’ll have used her looks and her cunning to persuade some fool of a man to give her shelter.’
Emma thought that all too likely. But to whom would Elgiva turn for help?