Shadow on the Crown. Patricia Bracewell

of safety and sanctuary to something unknown and terrifying. She did not want to go to England, did not want to wed a king, did not want to bear the weight of a crown. Yet, gazing down into her mother’s stern and unrelenting face, she knew that she would be given no choice.

      She slipped from her stool as panic engulfed her. Dropping to her hands and knees she began to retch, burning bile scalding her throat. A basin appeared before her, and her mother’s steady-ing hand grasped the back of her neck. She closed her eyes, but she could not stop the spinning panic that had her in its grip.

      ‘It is the shock of it,’ her mother said, her voice gentle but firm. ‘You were not prepared for it. But you will receive much worse than this in the years to come, my daughter,’ and now the voice seemed to Emma implacable and uncompromising. ‘You must ever be prepared within yourself to face what trials may await you. Let this be your first lesson: no one else must see you like this, Emma. Do you hear me? However great the provocation, you must never allow anyone to see your fear.’

      Emma, crouched upon the floor, her body braced upon her forearms, her stomach churning, squeezed her eyes tight against the tears that threatened.

      ‘Why must I be the one to go?’ she demanded. ‘Mathilde is the eldest. She wants it. It is her right.’

      ‘Your sister has neither the strength nor the will to pit herself against the …’ Gunnora stopped, as if she regretted her words and would take them back, ‘… against the trials that face a queen,’ she finished slowly. ‘Only you, Emma, of all my daughters, have the gifts for that.’

      Many hours later, as Emma lay sleepless at her mother’s side, Gunnora’s words echoed endlessly in her mind. She had no illusions about the fate that awaited her. That much her mother had made perfectly clear. As Norman bride and English queen she would walk a fine line between the interests of two rulers – her brother and her lord. Both men would demand her fealty. One, at least, would exact a heavy price if she were to prove disloyal. That was what her mother feared, and what she had been willing to reveal.

      But there was something else that her mother would not say, and Emma felt certain that it had to do with the English king. She sensed that Gunnora knew something about Æthelred of England that she did not want Emma to know, at least not yet. It was that unshared knowledge about the man she would wed that frightened her most of all.

      In the streets of Fécamp and Rouen, in Caen and Évreux, the populace hailed Emma as the flower of Normandy, the bride who would become England’s queen. Within the ducal palace, though, where the duke’s sisters once shared a bedchamber, the news of Emma’s betrothal was no cause for rejoicing. Mathilde, bitter and angry that a royal marriage had been contracted for Emma instead of for her, took to her bed, refusing to speak to her sister in spite of Emma’s tearful entreaties and Gunnora’s measured reproofs. Finally, Gunnora sent her to Rouen, where Mathilde would not be daily bombarded by the frenzied preparations for her sister’s marriage.

      Emma wept at Mathilde’s departure, but Gunnora did not let her grieve for long. There was much that Emma had to learn before the ships would carry her across the Narrow Sea.

      She spent long hours with the ealdorman, Ælfric, who schooled her in the finer points of the English language and the traditions of the court. He was an able tutor who treated her with grave courtesy, and she came to like him well. Not a young man by any means, his genial face was framed by thick grey locks that hung to near his shoulders. His beard, too, was grey, and his dark eyes gleamed beneath bushy grey brows. The fist-sized golden brooch that clasped his cloak at one shoulder and the jewelled rings adorning his fingers bespoke wealth and influence, and she wondered how close he was to the king.

      Ælfric told her of the ancient kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, and Wessex, and of the great King Alfred, who began the task of binding the separate kingdoms into one – a task completed at last by King Edgar, Æthelred’s father. That king, he told her, had died at an early age, leaving his throne to a young son. Ælfric’s face had darkened then, as if some memory from that distant past had suddenly cast a shadow over the present. He would not say what troubled him, though, and Emma’s suspicion grew that there was something about her betrothed husband that was being kept from her.

      During this time she received guidance from her family as well. Richard advised her regarding the estates for which she would be responsible, reminding her to pay close attention to income and expenditures, to rents and to yields.

      Archbishop Robert counselled her regarding God’s expectations of her as queen, particularly her duties to the Church and the men and women who served it.

      Judith helped her choose the attendants who would accompany her to England and assisted with the packing of all her belongings: clothes, furniture, bedding, supplies for the journey, gifts for the family and for the nobles who awaited her. It was no insignificant task. It would take three longships to transport Emma, her retainers, and her goods to Canterbury. Two more ships would carry a dozen horses bred in the Norman stables – Emma’s own gifts to the members of her new family.

      It was Gunnora who, summoning her daughter to her chamber, raised the matter of the marriage bed and of Emma’s role as bedmate of a king.

      ‘It is your duty to be submissive to your lord, Emma,’ she said in clipped tones, as she sat facing her daughter. ‘It would be perilous for you to refuse the king your favours or to rebuke him, for your crown will be little more than an ornament at first.’

      Gunnora’s expression softened then, and she cupped Emma’s cheek with her hand.

      ‘You are very young, my girl. That is your weakness as well as your strength. The king will cherish you for your youth and your beauty, and you must use both to gain his favour.’ She drew a deep breath and placed her hands on Emma’s shoulders. ‘Never forget that your first and most important task is to bear a son. It is your son who will be your treasure and your protector, even while he is yet a babe. It is your son who will give you power, who will bind the king to you in a way that he can be bound to no other living woman.’

      In the brief moments that she was alone, Emma pondered her mother’s words. Would her child, she wondered, really be of much importance to a king who already had numerous sons and daughters? Could Æthelred of England ever be bound to her as he had been to that first wife?

      It was a question she did not ask aloud, for even her mother could not know the answer.

      On the night before she was to leave for England, there was no great feast held in Emma’s honour, for it was Lent and feasting was forbidden. The ducal household, though, gathered in the great hall at Fécamp, where the betrothal gifts sent by the English king had been spread out over six long tables. Among the treasures there were caskets filled with gold and silver; bolts of silk, linen, and the finest wool; silver bridles and saddles of tooled leather; fur pelts of martin, ermine, and sable; cunningly carved wooden boxes that held delicate musical pipes; necklaces studded with amethysts and emeralds; and an assortment of books magnificently bound in gold. When the gifts had been admired, Richard’s bard recited a poem about a flower that was borne on the tide from Normandy to England, where it bloomed and prospered and was loved by all.

      Emma listened to the poem with dry eyes and a mild expression, for that was what was demanded of her. In her heart, though, she carried a weight of grief, uncertainty, and fear that filled her with dread and seemed to press upon her very soul.

      A.D. 1002 Then, in the same Lent, came the Lady Emma, Richard’s daughter, to this land.

       – The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

      

       April 1002

       Canterbury, Kent

      The voyage from Fécamp to Canterbury took five days, and