Free Shadow on the Crown by Patricia Bracewell Page B

resources, if only she took the care to use them.

    The next evening Emma met with Hugh and Father Martin in a once barren abbey chamber that her attendants had transformed into a quiet retreat suited to a queen. A brazier burned in the center of the room, and embroidered hangings covered the cold stone walls. Emma sat in a high-backed chair with cushions behind her shoulders, furs on her lap, and a stool under her feet. As she considered the two men before her, she saw that the priest looked particularly grave, so she turned first to him.
    “Tell me,” she said.
    “There are . . . evil rumors, my lady,” he said slowly, “. . . about the king, and how he obtained his throne.”
    Emma frowned. “But surely Æthelred inherited the throne from his father,” she said. “Ealdorman Ælfric said that King Edgar died young, and that his son was crowned after that.”
    “That is true,” the priest said, frowning, “but the boy who was crowned after King Edgar was not Æthelred. It was his elder half brother, Edward. In the cathedral scriptorium there are chronicles that report,” he paused, “unsettling events that occurred in those days.”
    So Ælfric, whom she had liked so well, had told her only part of the truth. Could she not trust anyone in England then?
    “Go on,” she said.
    “King Edgar had three sons by two different wives. The middle son died very young, while his father still sat the throne. Some years later, when King Edgar died of a sudden illness, no heir had been named, and the two sons who survived him were born of different mothers. Edward, the eldest, was crowned, but many of the great men in the land questioned his right to the throne, for his mother was not a consecrated queen, and Æthelred’s mother was.” He paused and heaved a weary sigh before continuing. “After he had ruled but three years, King Edward was murdered—brutally, the chronicles say. He was young when he died—only sixteen. It was then that his half brother, Æthelred, was named to the throne by the
witan
, the group of nobles who advise the king.”
    “And what happened to the murderers?” she asked. As a brother and a king it would have been Æthelred’s particular duty to punish such a terrible crime.
    “The murderers were never discovered,” Father Martin said. “No one was punished and no restitution paid.” He hesitated, his expression grim. “I persuaded one of the brothers here, an old man now, to tell me what he recalled from that time.”
    Again he hesitated, clearly unwilling to burden her with his knowledge. Emma waited, her heart filled with misgiving, and at last Father Martin continued his tale.
    “It was believed by many that Æthelred’s mother, the dowager queen, plotted the murder of her stepson. That was a terrible time, with bloody portents in the night sky that even the priests could not ignore. I am told that last autumn, just before the dowager queen died, the night skies ran with blood again, although the old man I spoke with did not see it.”
    Emma sat very still, pondering his words. She knew well the power of rumor and superstition. When her father was alive, Rouen had buzzed for a time with tales that he wandered the streets at midnight, going into darkened churches to battle phantoms and demons. Indeed, it was true that her father had visited the churches by night, for his final illness had bereft him of sleep, and he sought the intercession of one saint after another in his search for healing. But the duke had wrestled with no demons, only with the knowledge of his own coming death. The rumors about him had contained a kernel of truth that had been misshapen by wild conjecture. Perhaps this was the same thing.
    “How long ago did this happen?” she asked the priest.
    “King Æthelred has ruled England for twenty-three years.”
    She did the sums. Æethelred, who was now in his thirty-fifth year, could have been no more than a child when his brother had been murdered. What