Shadow on the Crown. Patricia Bracewell

He would be a fool to turn it down, and Richard was no fool.

      Nevertheless, the negotiations dragged on for weeks, wreathed in secrecy behind the cloistered walls of nearby Trinity Abbey. Gunnora, who attended each session, returned every night to the palace so grim-faced that neither her daughters nor even the intrepid Judith dared to question her.

      When eventually Ealdorman Ælfric was seen to board his ship and set sail with a document that bore the ducal seal, the palace hummed with excitement and anticipation. Emma waited with her sister for word that Mathilde must attend her mother and brothers to be counselled regarding King Æthelred and the role that Mathilde would play, but no summons came. Instead, the web of secrecy that had been cast about the proceedings between the Norman duke and the ministers of the English king remained impenetrable. The dowager duchess went into seclusion at Fécamp’s Priory of St Ann, while Richard and Robert left Fécamp altogether, riding with the English archbishop to the abbey of Saint-Wandrille to pray for the success of their endeavour.

      Judith, who had no more inkling than anyone else about what had taken place in the abbey cloisters, nevertheless followed through with her plan to order new wardrobes for both of Richard’s sisters in preparation for their future nuptials. Fabrics of the finest silk, linen, and wool arrived daily from Rouen. Gowns, chemises, stockings, and headrails spilled from busy fingers until every chamber at Fécamp became a storehouse of wedding finery.

      Mathilde, who should have been at the centre of all of the preparations, had taken ill again, laid low by headaches that would not let her sleep. Emma spent long hours at her sister’s bedside relaying every scrap of rumour and gossip that she gleaned about the English king and his court, although her own heart was heavy at the coming separation. Mathilde, she guessed, must feel it even more, for she would leave everything familiar behind her. Worse yet, beyond that parting lay the reality of the king, so many years older than his new bride, and in addition to that, the challenges of an English court filled with strangers speaking a foreign tongue.

      Much would be expected of the king’s new wife, Emma thought, burdens that she could only begin to imagine. How would Mathilde, who had never been physically strong, cope with the pressures of that new life? Often Emma lay awake in the cold watches of the night thinking about those burdens, her heart filled with dread for her sister, knowing that beside her Mathilde, too, lay awake in the dark. Yet each sister kept her own counsel.

      And so the weeks passed until, late one February afternoon, the dowager duchess returned from St Ann’s, and Emma was summoned to wait upon her. She found her mother alone in her chamber, circlet and headrail cast aside and the long grey braid of her hair coiled atop her head. She was warming her hands at the brazier, and the light from below accentuated fine creases around her mouth and eyes. She nodded to Emma, then turned her gaze back to the glowing coals, and for a time was silent. Emma saw an unfamiliar weariness in her face, and a resemblance to Mathilde that she had never before noticed in the sharpness of her nose and the thin line of her mouth.

      Finally her mother spoke, almost as if to herself. ‘Events have overtaken us, and I cannot wait for your brothers’ return to set things in motion.’ She glanced at Emma and nodded towards a nearby stool. ‘You had best sit down, Emma, for I have a great deal to say to you.’

      Emma’s heart clouded with dread. She sat upon the stool and waited for whatever hammer-stroke was to come.

      ‘As you have no doubt guessed,’ Gunnora said, ‘the king of England has sued for your sister’s hand in marriage.’ She glanced at Emma, then began to pace the room. ‘King Æthelred wants something in return, of course – something more than a nubile young bride to grace his bed. And so, in recompense for the great honour that he bestows upon us in taking a Norman wife, he will expect your brother to close his harbours to the Danes. His emissaries have not said as much directly. They have danced around the issue like virgins round a maypole, but it is clear what they want, and your brother has given them every reason to believe that he will grant it.’

      Emma leaned forward in her chair, her eyes on her mother, her mind racing. She had been so preoccupied with the challenges that this marriage presented for her sister that she had forgotten the peril that her brother risked by agreeing to it. Æthelred of England was the mortal enemy of King Swein of Denmark. With Mathilde’s marriage to Æthelred, Richard, too, became an enemy of the infamous Swein Forkbeard, making Normandy a target for Danish raiders.

      ‘In fact,’ Gunnora went on, ‘your brother cannot deny the Danes access to our harbours and our markets. If he should do so, Swein Forkbeard would turn his shipmen upon us like starving dogs on a wounded stag. He would harry our coasts for plunder, and then barter it quite happily in Hamburg or Bremen. The English king could not come to our aid, for he has no fleet. The French king would merely rejoice in our misfortune. It would be a catastrophe for every Norman settlement that lies within reach of Danish longships. And so,’ she stopped her pacing and stood before Emma, ‘it will not happen. Your brother will never close his harbours to the Danes. Nevertheless, he will agree to do so, and his sister will be given in marriage as his bond.’

      Emma stared at her mother as the wretchedness of her sister’s fate struck her. Mathilde would be little more than a royal hostage, sent to guarantee her brother’s submission to the will of the English king. And if Richard broke his pledge and defied the king, Mathilde would be defenceless in a foreign land, with no means of protecting herself from whatever retribution her royal husband might choose to inflict.

      ‘He cannot do it,’ Emma whispered, her mouth gone dry with horror. Her brother could not sacrifice Mathilde this way, could not place her at the mercy of the English king.

      ‘So I told your brother,’ Gunnora said, and now Emma could hear the weariness in her voice. ‘But Richard is a ruler and a man, and the life of a young girl, even that of his own sister, weighs little when balanced against the fate of an entire people. I could not sway him from his course.’

      Emma felt sick at the thought of Mathilde alone in a foreign land, perhaps a prisoner of the king.

      ‘What will happen to her?’

      Gunnora began to pace the room again, her hands twisting one inside the other, and Emma grew more and more frightened by her mother’s obvious distress. When Gunnora spoke at last, she did not answer Emma’s question.

      ‘Richard is not oblivious to the peril that his sister would face in England. It took little effort on my part to persuade him that we must provide her with a weapon that she could use to protect herself should her husband turn against her. The solution was obvious, but we agonized for hours over how it was to be accomplished. In the end, we offered Æthelred my dower lands on the Contentin. It is a princely gift that he could not easily refuse, for it gives him a toehold on this side of the Narrow Sea.’ She stopped her pacing and drew in a long breath. ‘In return, Richard demanded that his sister go to England not as Æthelred’s consort but as his queen.’

      She looked at Emma with a kind of triumph in her eyes. ‘Emma, Ealdorman Ælfric has returned with word that the English king has accepted the contract. Æthelred’s Norman bride will not be a mere consort but will be crowned as his queen. She will have wealth and stature far beyond that of his first wife. She will stand at the king’s side accorded privileges that he cannot easily rescind however much he may be provoked.’

      Emma saw at once the wisdom of such a provision, but she also recognized the additional burden that a crown would place upon her sister.

      ‘Does Mathilde know?’ she asked.

      A shadow crept across Gunnora’s face, and Emma watched, bewildered, as her mother stepped forward and knelt in front of her. Slender fingers clutched Emma’s own, fingers so cold that they seemed to burn against Emma’s skin.

      ‘It is not Mathilde who will go to England, Emma,’ her mother said. ‘It must be you.’

      The words flowed over her like water at first, and then they seemed to form into waves that buffeted her until she could no longer pull in even the smallest breath. She did not dare look away from her mother’s solid gaze, because it was the only thing that kept her from drowning in that treacherous