Shadow on the Crown

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 for Mathilde, and that it would be accepted. A liaison with the English throne would raise Richard’s prestige in all of Christendom. 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 sea.

She felt as if the world she knew had suddenly changed from a place 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 every one of them was cold, wet, and miserable. The heaving of the ship and the unremitting stench of fish oil that the shipmen used to waterproof their clothes and rigging sickened Emma and her companions. It was a relief when they left the open sea and finally entered the placid waters of the River Stour. As they sailed past the wattle huts and wooden enclosures marking the outskirts of Canterbury, Emma stood at the entrance of the shelter that had been rigged midship. She gazed through a steady rain at a flat, sodden, dreary landscape. In the distance, cathedral towers seemed to pierce the forbidding clouds that hung low and grey over the city.

Beside her Lady Wymarc was muffled in the folds of a woollen cloak, and as a blast of rain hit them, she pulled Emma’s fur-lined hood up to keep the rain off her hair.

‘Do you suppose,’ Emma murmured, her heart as grey and heavy as the swollen clouds, ‘that the sun ever shines in this dismal place?’

‘To be sure, my lady,’ Wymarc replied briskly. ‘It cannot always be this wet or the English would have feathers and webbed feet.’ She placed a hand on Emma’s arm. ‘Do not lose heart, I beg you. Not now, when the worst of the voyage is behind us.’

Emma could not help but smile as she looked into the wide brown eyes that regarded her with a mixture of sympathy, pride, and excitement. Wymarc was ever one to look for the sun behind the clouds. She had an irrepressible exuberance – a quality that had not found much favour with Duchess Judith but had endeared her to Emma. The two of them were much the same age, and during the mad weeks of preparation it had been Wymarc’s unbridled enthusiasm for the adventure that lay before them that had buoyed Emma’s spirits and kept her from despair.

‘I will be grateful to leave this ship,’ Emma said, ‘but I fear that the worst is likely yet to come.’ She dreaded this first meeting with the king, and she wanted it behind her. Yet even that, she reminded herself, would not be the worst that she would have to face in the coming days. There was the bedding to get through, but she put that out of her mind for now. ‘When we go ashore, do not leave my side,’ she commanded, ‘even for a moment.’

A bridge spanned the river ahead of them and led to a wide, tower-crowned stone gateway from which banners hung, limp and dripping. Emma could see a throng of folk crowded at the tower’s foot and massed upon its parapets, waving kerchiefs and hats enthusiastically in spite of the rain. A rumble of voices floated across the water towards her in a general roar of excitement and cheers. Armed men in mail tunics and scarlet cloaks lined the path that led from the riverside to the city wall, their black shields overlapping to keep the crowd at bay.