The Price of Blood. Patricia Bracewell

she said. ‘The king reserves most of his displeasure, I fear, for the son who stands closest to the throne.’ She knew what had occurred in the king’s chamber on Easter Eve, for her young spy had dutifully reported the angry words that Æthelred had flung at Athelstan that night.

      He gave her a sour smile. ‘Nothing I do, it seems, will earn for me my father’s good opinion. Since he cannot bear the sight of me, I shall return to London tomorrow. Let him make of that whatever he likes.’

      She bit her lip, afraid for him. The king was uneasy on his throne, and because of that the sons of Ælfhelm lay in chains tonight, under heavy guard.

      ‘Your father is suspicious because you do not attend him,’ she insisted. Why could he not see that? ‘When you are absent from court for months at a time he imagines that you are working against him in secret. Athelstan,’ she whispered, pleading with him, ‘do not return to London yet. Stay with your father. Break bread with him. Hunt with him. Partake in his councils. You cannot win his confidence if you are not with him.’

      He kept his eyes focused on the distant darkness and did not meet her gaze.

      ‘I leave for London at first light,’ he said, as if she had not spoken. Then he turned to her, and the passion that flared in his eyes seared her to the depths of her soul. ‘You know why.’

      Yes, she knew why. For a moment they stared at each other. They did not touch or speak, but she read in his face all the longing and despair that she knew he must see in hers.

      ‘Go to your chamber, lady,’ he said softly, ‘before we give my father good reason to distrust us both.’

       Chapter Nine

       Easter Monday, April 1006

       Western Mercia

      Elgiva could not remember ever being so cold. She rubbed her arms for warmth while Alric fumbled with flint and steel to light a fire. They were in a crumbling hovel of wattle and daub – a swineherd’s shelter she guessed, although she could not tell where. She had lost all sense of direction once the sun had gone down, but until then Alric had led her along narrow tracks, mostly through wide swathes of forestland. Sometimes, when they came to a clearing and she looked to her left, she could see the dyke that marked England’s border with the Wælisc kingdoms.

      She edged nearer to Alric and the fire pit, away from the horses that he had insisted on bringing into the shelter with them, the two of them grooming the beasts with straw as best they could even before he would turn his hand to lighting a fire. She watched him coax the spark into life, a thick shock of brown hair falling over his eyes as he worked. What little she could see of his face, shadowed with a day-old beard, was pale and grimly set. His hands, as he fed twigs to the tiny flame, were trembling.

      He was cold, too, then. Not from the night chill, though, any more than she was.

      As the flames began to lick at the bits of wood and the stacked turf, he placed their saddles on the ground at the fire’s edge so that they made a kind of bench. He motioned for her to sit and she did so, wrapping her mantle about her and holding her hands to the smoky fire. She watched him take off his sword belt and lay it close. Then he sat beside her, handed her a skin of water, and from a satchel drew a half-eaten loaf and a block of cheese to share between them. She realized suddenly how thirsty she was, and she took a long drink of water.

      Once, years before, she had travelled rough like this, when she and her brother Wulf had fled from Exeter with the Danes at their backs. They’d had a large group of armed men as escort then, had been well provisioned, too, for it was high summer and the land was bountiful. The Danes had been no more than a distant threat.

      That had seemed like sport compared to this. She hadn’t been so afraid then.

      She looked at the dry bread in her hand, but her stomach recoiled at the thought of food. She could think only of her father, and that he was dead.

      Earlier, when they’d been forced to stop for a time to allow the horses to rest and graze, she had flung a question at Alric about what had happened. But he had clasped a hand over her mouth, listening for sounds of pursuit, hissing for silence. She had been frightened before, but it was worse after that, and she had swallowed all her questions.

      Now, though, she had to know. However bad it had been, she had to know.

      ‘How was my father killed?’ She was hunched over, staring into the fire, bracing herself against whatever she was about to hear.

      Beside her, Alric shifted forward as well.

      ‘He took an arrow in the chest.’

      ‘An arrow!’ She straightened, gaping at him. ‘But he was hunting. It might have been an accident.’ This could all be a misunderstanding. Her father might even still be alive. She could leave this stinking hovel in the morning and go back to Shrewsbury, discover how her father fared.

      ‘It was not just your father,’ he said, then took a long pull from the water skin, set it on the ground, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. ‘It was all your father’s men, too – his falconer, his grooms, the four hearth companions, and the two retainers who rode with him. All of them dead.’

      She stared at his face, sculpted into harsh angles by the firelight. No accident, then. And no chance that her father was still alive. The hope that had flickered in her mind shuddered and died, and she recalled Alric’s words in the chapel, that it had been a trap.

      ‘Yet you escaped,’ she whispered. ‘How?’

      ‘I was late to the hunt, still mead-drunk from last night’s feast. When I awoke, the others were gone, but I knew they planned to loose the falcons on the heath below Shrewsbury. So I rode that way, thinking to join the hunt. I was still in the woods when I heard the shouting and realized that something was wrong.’ He drew a breath, grimacing at whatever picture was in his mind. ‘By the time I reached the forest edge, your father and the others lay on the ground in a wide clearing with arrows in their guts. Eadric and his men were already inspecting the bodies, making sure that—’

      He stopped abruptly, glanced at her, and began again.

      ‘It was an ambush, and Eadric must have planned the whole thing. His archers had been hidden among the trees and they turned the meadow into a killing ground.’

      She imagined how it must have been – horses and men confused by the onslaught of arrows, men cursing, crying out in pain, and after that, silence. In the end, it probably hadn’t been a feathered shaft that killed her father, but a knife or a sword blade. And still she could not believe that it was true. It seemed unreal, like a tale told by a scop who would change the ending to suit her if she commanded it.

      But Alric wasn’t finished.

      ‘The bastards never saw me,’ he spat. ‘They were too bent on stripping the bodies and keeping the hounds from—’ He cursed, then snapped his mouth shut. ‘I went back to the manor to find you. I climbed the palisade easily enough, but I would have been hard-pressed to know where to look if I hadn’t seen you going into the chapel.’

      She closed her eyes. She was trembling so hard that her teeth were chattering, and she clasped her hands tight, trying to focus – not on what had happened, but on what she must do next.

      ‘I must get to my brothers,’ she said between shallow breaths. ‘I have to tell them what Eadric has done so they can demand a wergild. The king has to make Eadric pay for this.’

      But Alric was shaking his head.

      ‘Nay, lady,’ he said, ‘Eadric would never have done this thing unless the king himself commanded it. Æthelred must have discovered the plots that your father was hatching with the Danes. He wanted your father dead. Eadric will be rewarded, not punished, for this day’s work.’

      She