Shadow on the Crown. Patricia Bracewell

as the giants on Sarum’s plain, he thought, but there were far more of them, and they had the same menacing power. He did not like it, and he felt his gut begin to churn.

      Ecbert and Edmund came up beside him, and he watched their faces as they surveyed the scene before them. From their stricken expressions it was clear that they were having second thoughts about this venture – as was he. There were enough dark things in this world. One needn’t seek them out.

      ‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked Ecbert.

      ‘No,’ Ecbert muttered, ‘but it would be stupid to turn back now.’ He flicked a glance at Athelstan. ‘You go first, though.’

      Athelstan scowled at him, then peered into the valley again, looking for signs of life. The stone circle was fringed by moss-bearded oaks, and on its far side he could see a small croft sheltering among the trees, its thatching frosted with snow. He realized with a shock that what he had taken for another stone, standing in the gloom near the hut, was a living figure staring back at him.

      She had been waiting for them, then. He was certain of it, although he could not say how he knew. There was something else he was certain of as well, and it added to his anxiety. He was meant to go down there. Ecbert was right. There was no turning back now.

      He led the way down into the grove, threading his horse through the trees towards the croft, purposely avoiding the clearing and its hulking, glowering stones. As they neared the cottage he saw that the figure waiting there was swathed in layers of coarse, black wool, her head covered by the folds of a shawl so thick that the old woman’s face, if it was a woman, was all but invisible.

      ‘God be with you, my lord,’ she called.

      The voice was surprisingly deep and harsh – roughened, Athelstan guessed, by wood smoke and disuse. He dismounted and went towards her, Ecbert and Edmund trailing behind him.

      ‘God be with you, mother,’ he said. ‘It must be hard faring for you this winter, living so far from your neighbours as you do. Will you accept a small gift, some supplies to replenish your larder against lean times?’ He gestured to one of his men, who placed a large sack filled with cheese, bread, and pulses beside the hut and then hastened back to his mount.

      The eyes watching Athelstan showed neither surprise nor gratitude.

      ‘What would you have of me?’ she asked. ‘You have come far from your appointed road, for you are bound north, I think. The herepath lies that way.’

      She gestured to the west, where the old road built by the Roman legions, the Fosse Way, ran from Exeter in the southwest to Jorvik in the north. Presumably, whenever Ealdorman Ælfhelm arrived to lead them to Northumbria, they would, indeed, follow that same northward road.

      Still, Athelstan reassured himself, it did not take second sight to hazard that a group of armed men wearing the badge of the ealdorman of Northumbria would likely be headed that way.

      ‘Perhaps you have already given me what I seek,’ he said, ‘if you can predict nothing more for me than a road that leads north. But it is my brother here,’ he motioned to Ecbert, ‘who wishes to consult you.’

      She peered up at him then, and he saw the gleam of shrewd eyes from within the folds of her shawl.

      ‘Nay, lord,’ she said, shaking her head slowly. ‘You are the one who has need of guidance. Will you give me your hand?’

      He hesitated, brushed by a whisper of foreboding. The knowing eyes fixed on his, though, flashed a challenge that he could not ignore, and he placed his hand within her outstretched palms. Her fingers felt thin and clawlike, as roughened and calloused as his own.

      She peered at his palm, and for some time she was silent while Athelstan’s disquiet grew. The standing stone on the ridge, the menacing stone circle, the skeletal touch of the old woman’s hands – all of it was forbidden, pagan magic. He felt a wild urge to flee, but in the next moment she spoke, and in a voice far different from the one with which she had greeted him. Now it was vibrant, full and feminine. The timbre of it pulsed through him in the same way that a tolling bell vibrates through the blood.

      ‘There is great strength in this hand,’ she proclaimed, loud enough for all his men to hear, ‘strength enough to wield even the great Sword of Offa.’

      Next to him he felt Edmund give a sudden start of surprise, and he could guess what his brother was thinking, for the words struck him, too, with a force as sharp as a blow. Offa’s Sword, once wielded by that legendary Saxon king, even now hung on the wall behind their father’s chair in the great hall at Winchester. By tradition it was bestowed by the ruling king upon his designated heir. It had not yet been promised to Athelstan, but he expected that one day it would be his.

      Yet how had this woman guessed that she spoke to the eldest son of the king? Had word reached her somehow that the æthelings were at Saltford? Possibly. Possibly this was all an act, but if so, to what end?

      Now the woman curled his fingers into his palm and leaned close to him.

      ‘Sword you may wield,’ she said, so softly that only he could hear her, ‘yet the sceptre will remain beyond your reach.’

      It took him a moment to grasp the import of her words, and by then she was already turning away to enter her croft. Quickly he covered the space between them, caught her arm, and held her.

      ‘Who will take the sceptre, then, when the time comes?’ he hissed softly. ‘Who will wear the crown?’

      She turned, and for a long moment she looked past him, at each of his brothers in turn, until at last she faced Athelstan again and slowly shook her head.

      ‘There is a shadow on the crown, my lord,’ she murmured, ‘and my Sight cannot pierce the darkness. You must be content with the knowledge you have been given, for I can say no more.’

      No, of course she would say no more, he thought. She was wily, this one, toying with her supplicants as skilfully as a practised harlot so that they sought her out again and again. Yet she could have no real power, not unless one granted it to her. And he would not journey down that dark road.

      He released her with a curt nod.

      ‘Go with God then, mother.’

      She turned away from him, and he followed her with his eyes until the dark maw of her croft swallowed her.

      Ecbert had already mounted his horse, but Edmund was waiting for him, studying him with dark, speculative eyes.

      ‘What did she say to you, there at the end?’ he asked. ‘What did she say about us?’

      ‘Nothing of import,’ Athelstan replied gruffly. ‘You did not really expect anything, did you? She is nothing but a fraud, Edmund.’

      He mounted his horse and made for the ridge top, but in spite of what he had said to his brother, his thoughts ran on the old woman’s words. Her prediction about Offa’s Sword was no more than he already knew. He had been born the eldest son of one of the richest kings in Christendom, and Offa’s Sword was his due.

      As for the rest of it, if there was any truth in the future that she bespoke him – that he would never be England’s king – then he must find a way to change his destiny.

      

       February 1002

       Fécamp, Normandy

      The purpose of the English delegation to Normandy became clear as soon as the news spread of the recent death of the consort of the English king. Although Duke Richard maintained a stony silence about what had occurred during that first meeting in the great hall, everyone assumed that the archbishop and the ealdorman had brought a proposal of marriage