The Forever Queen Read Online Free PDF

it so surprising? Too many men gave their wives no more regard than the hounds in the kennels and blatantly abused that given trust by caring nothing for the woman’s part in the doing of a wedding night.
    Poor lass, he thought as he escorted Emma back to her chair on the high dais. The less well-off thought it must be wonderful to be born of the nobility, to be the daughter or sister of a Duke. To be wedded to a King. Aye, well, that depended on the King, didn’t it?

5
    The men entering Emma’s bedchamber were drunk with wine, cider, ale and laughter. It was a small room, perched above the eastern end of the hall, reached by a narrow wooden stair, and seemed smaller with the great bulk of lewd-minded men crowding in. Furnished simply, it held two chests, one for bed linen, one for garments; two stools; and a table, on which stood a pewter bowl of dried fruit, a jug of wine with two attendant goblets, Emma’s jewel casket, and her personal toilet equipment, combs, and hairpins.
    The wooden box bed, with its goose-feather mattress, linen sheets, and piled animal furs was draped by heavy blue woollen curtains to provide privacy and to keep out the cold and draughts. Tomorrow or someday soon, Emma intended to set about making the room more homely, hang on the walls some of the large embroideries that were becoming fashionable in France. Tapestries they were commonly called, though they were not woven, but stitched by hand. She would find some suitable skins to place on the floor too. Bear was best, as it was thick and hard-wearing. Perhaps a clay pot to put some spring flowers in? Add her modest collection of precious books and the rest of her personal possessions to the few that her women had already unpacked—with imagination and skill, she could make this a pleasant place for herself. A royal bower, where her command ruled, and solitude, should she require it, could be paramount. For tonight, though, command stood for naught and solitude was as far from her reach as were the stars in the sky. She would be obliged to share this bare place with her husband on most nights during the customary honey-mead moon-month of celebration. He was as raucously drunk as the dozen men who had escorted him here.
    This was the way of things, Emma knew, for her sisters had been put publicly to bed with their new husbands on their wedding nights. But, stupidly, she had thought that being a crowned Queen and wed to a King, she would be exempt from the humiliation of it all. Sitting hunched and naked in the bed, her arms clutched around her knees, with the bed furs pulled up to her chin as much for warmth as modesty, she chided herself for being so naive. Being a Queen would make it more necessary to be seen bedded with her husband. She had to provide him with legitimate sons, had to be seen to become Æthelred’s consummated wife.
    Emma blinked aside tears. Her headache had worsened and her stomach was feeling queasy again; she bit her lip as Lady Godegifa, appointed as her lady-in-waiting, stretched forward and, with a flick of her hand, exposed Emma’s nakedness. “Show yourself, girl. Let your husband see what he is getting.”
    Lady Godegifa, wife to Alfhelm, one of Æthelred’s Ealdormen, made no attempt to conceal her dislike of this Norman-born girl. Able to speak both Danish and French, she had agreed to do her duty to the best of her ability, but refused to step any further. She disapproved of this marriage and, in her arrogance, cared not who knew it, for her daughter, not this foreign incomer, ought to have become Æthelred’s wife and Queen.
    Embarrassed, Emma wanted to cry out, to curl herself tight and hide from the men lasciviously inspecting her breasts and body. It took courage for her to stare straight ahead, to straighten her legs and bring her arms away from covering herself. More courage to stop the cry of dismay from reaching her throat when her wretched brother, as drunk as the rest of them, said scornfully,