Winchester
1019 AD
The messenger thanked her and departed. She lay in bed and savoured the warmth for a long moment and then rose just as three of her maids entered and started bustling about her. It was late-some hours already past vespers-but not only candles were lit, the fire in the hearth stirred and fed back into life. She pointed into the open wardrobe.
“That one, there. The green.”
The servant drew it from the wardrobe and held it out to her handmaid. Between them, they held it open so she could step into it.
“Just drape it over me,” she instructed, hoisting herself up. “Don’t concern about the fastenings. I said don’t. Stop that; I mean it.” She swatted at her handmaid, who should know better, at least by now. The child inside of her was puffing her body out beyond her own recognition and made all of her clothes uncomfortably binding.
“A blanket too. One of the scarlets. There. That one. There. There. There.”
A finely woven cloth was draped across her shoulders.
“That’s fine. That will do. Take me to him.”
The maids turned and led her from the room.
As they processed along the corridors, she tried to stop the spring of anticipation from welling up inside of her and overwhelming her thoughts and actions. It had taken many years of planning, preparation, and patience to reach this day, with no guarantee that it would ever come. But if the messenger was to be believed, and she could scarce allow herself to do so, then a spark could be lit this night that would set the whole island ablaze.
They came to the large hall, where the fires were always burning. Standing in front of the flames and throwing a shadow across the hall was a thin, slight man hunching over his staff. He was only slightly taller than herself, and his hair was long and an unimpressive grey. She had expected a large, giant man, as old and virile as the hills, not this shrivelled character. She found herself scanning the room for another, or at least some sort of entourage.
She gestured to her serving girls. “Await me here,” she ordered.
She cleared her throat and approached. “You are Ealdstan?” she asked in English.
His head turned and dark eyes sparkled in the low, orange light of the room.
“Queen?lfgifu. Greetings.”
“Emma.”
“Pardon?”
“That is what the other one is called. It is also what”-she could not stop her top lip from curling-“my first husband’s first wife was called. I’m always the next choice after an?lfgifu.”
“And yet you are said to be fast becoming his favourite.”
Her lips spread into a smile this time. “Of course. And why not?”
Ealdstan returned the smile and inclined his head.
“You keep an ear to the sounds of the world above, it seems. Remarkable for a man as removed as you-or should I say, for a man who has removed himself as far as you have? Do you know, nearly every single man of learning I consulted insisted you were a legend? If it wasn’t for my husband-my first husband. .”
“King??elred,” Ealdstan supplied.
“The last English king of England,” Emma said, staring into the fire.
The dark eyes continued to gaze. “But ‘Emma’ is not English. Nor Danish, I wist.”
“It is a Norman name.”
“Norman?”
“My people. My father’s family descended from the Northland to the plains that lie south, across from these waters.”
Ealdstan frowned. Northlanders, he thought. Again, the Northlanders.
“My mother is direct of that line.”
“And now Cnut, son of the foreign conqueror, sits on the throne of England. Is the old English world passing?” His eyes shifted and he looked around the hall at the sparse and sleepy serving staff. “The Dane tongue is a hard one for me to speak.”
“I wouldn’t worry. Everyone in the land speaks in the Angles’ tongue still. The farmers in the fields. The priests in the pulpits. Even the merchants in the marketplace still speak it when in their homes and at table. Old queens use it when speaking to old men. Indeed, it allows one to question how much further the Dane rule extends past the Dane tongue.”
“But still, it may pass in generations,” Ealdstan said. “Alas.”
“Alas, indeed,” Emma scolded, her tone hot. “You come too late to save a tongue. The time for help passed the moment you refused my husband’s-??elred’s-entreaties to rouse your warriors and chase the Viking invaders back into the mists and oceans that spat them out. You failed him then. You failed us all then.”
A piece of still-wet wood popped in the fireplace and sent sparks up into the air.
“I am sorry for your loss, and the loss of the kingdom.??elred was an able king.”
“That he was. He was a strong king. He simply had bad counsel.” Emma pulled the scarlet covering tighter across her shoulders. “Do you know, even in the last he believed he would receive aid from you and your stronghold of warriors? And when it failed to come-failed again and again-he panicked and fell back on ill-advice.” He did not meet her furious gaze. “Can you blame him for turning to others? When we suffered constant invasions from a hostile, foreign enemy? Every day my husband hoped the ground beneath our feet would crack open like the shell of an egg and Ealdstan’s warriors would chase the Danes out forever.”
Emma lowered herself onto a bench. “Yet here we are. He is dead, and I am married to a barbarian king. Where were you?”
The fire continued to crack as Ealdstan turned to face her. “I thought that prayers and counsel might be enough.”
“The women of this land know the strength of prayer in preventing their loved ones from being slaughtered.”
“Yet here we find ourselves. What is to be done?”
Emma massaged her right leg. “You are deeply invested in this land; at one time you had the kings under your hand, and now they will not let you in the door. And you sit like a dog, shut out in the cold, waiting to be allowed back into the warmth, or at least thrown a bone.”
Ealdstan’s face did not change, and yet she fancied something burned underneath his skin. Good, thought Emma. Let him burn.
“And the only reproach I have against my husband, and all of his fathers back to??elstan, is that they didn’t take a stick to your hind legs and beat you out of the door.”
Ealdstan hardened his jaw and tilted his head back. “You drew me here to insult me, is that it? Abuse your betrayer?”
Emma grinned. “We are all of us traitors now. All of us left standing. Betrayal has become the price of life today. Do I chide? No, I show you plain the world around you.”
“I need not schooling,” Ealdstan said, rising. “I need not-”
“I drew you here to deal,” Emma said, breaking in. “I believe you seek to make reparation-so do I. The song of this land has not yet been sung and it can be made great again. I see this isle as the seat of an Empire of the North, an empire that unites several strong races together against all the heathen who would stand against us.”
“A great dream. An ambitious dream. How do you see me in this dream?”
“You shall be the power behind the throne-a guiding hand for the ages. The commander of an army of light against the world of darkness.”
Ealdstan’s eyes turned downward and Emma fancied she saw some emotion ripple across his forehead, but it could simply have been the firelight.
“The Norsemen are strong,” she continued, “but their heads are easily turned. They are not the stuff that empires are made of. The army that defeated this land have been paid off and are gone-drinking the long nights away back in Sweden and Norway, where there is infighting and threat from all the kingdoms around them. They have no desire to rule, only to fight.”
“So why then shall-”
“But the Normans, on the other hand, are strong leaders-strong rulers. My sons,?lfred and Eadweard, are in Normandy now, with my relatives. They are creating bonds of trust and goodwill that will nourish the seeds that will grow this great nation into a might to rival even Karolus Magnus’s new Roman Empire.”
“Can they yet stand against kings?”
Emma tilted her head. “Not yet; the storm will rage but awhile longer before their time comes to stand. And in this time of uncertainty, others shall try their footing and invariably fall, to be caught beneath the waves. . But their downward turn will offer us an upward turn.”
Ealdstan stroked his beard and pondered on this. When his eye turned fully upon her again, the sharp flash was in them once more. “I feel I should apologise. I feel I have judged you awrong,” he said.
She smiled a sly smile. “Everyone does.”