The Forever Queen Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Her teats are as flat as unleavened bread, but they should swell once her belly bloats with child.”
    His words stung. In this vulnerable situation, could he not have offered her support? Tears welled in her eyes. Her one comfort, Æthelred and his Lords would not have understood him.
    “By God, there’s nothing of her!” Æthelred declared, spreading his hands in dismay. “I will be spending half the night trying to find her.”
    Someone, answering with a great bellow of wit, indicated Æthelred’s already rising manhood. “Just point your pizzle in the right direction; it has the sense to find its way into harbour!”
    With more laughter and tawdry advice they put Æthelred into the bed beside Emma, tucking the furs around them as if they were babes needing swaddling. Æthelred’s priest, the only man who had stayed mute in the background, sprinkled holy water over them both and muttered a few liturgies about fruitfulness and the duties of marriage. Then her women were snuffing out the candles and chivvying the men from the chamber, the laughter and the increasing lewd advice to aid Æthelred’s performance diminishing in volume as the door closed. Not that they went away. From the noise, it sounded as though all of them were huddled on the landing beyond the door, although, with the night guard, there could be no room for more than three.
    “My other wife was barely older than you when I bedded her,” Æthelred said, stretching out his hand to tuck a strand of hair behind Emma’s ear, “but she knew of the world, knew already how to pleasure a man.” He snorted. “Once I took her into my bed, she remained loyal to me, so it mattered not.” He did not add his private thought, that it was a simple thing to ensure: keep a woman busy with a child at her breast or in her belly, and she would not have the chance to stray. He sighed. This girl was so young; what was he to do with her? More to the point, what could she do for him?
    His hand dropped to cup Emma’s breast. This had to be done; for the child’s sake he would get it over and finished as soon as possible.
    Emma closed her eyes, and whether it was the ale or her fear, both perhaps, she found her conscious self drifting into a mist of unreality, a waking dream, as if the discomfort was happening to someone else. Vaguely, she was aware of the stink of his breath, his weight on top of her, and that it hurt as he pushed himself in, but otherwise it was as if her whole being had become numbed. Pleasure sated, he rolled from her, turned away, and was instantly asleep.
    She lay still, aware of an uncomfortable soreness between her thighs and the feel of a trickle of wetness. Was that it? Was this what she could expect whenever he came to her bed? She let her breath go, unaware that she had been holding it in.
    “Tears are to be kept private,” her mother had said. What of pain and despair? Were they also to be shut away out of sight like soiled linen? How was she to endure this night after night?
    Only one candle burnt, flickering as a draught toyed with the flame. Emma turned her head, watched the yellow glow flutter dark shadows along the walls. From down in the hall, the noise of celebration rumbled up through the floor. Some of the men had joined the women, resuming the dancing and pleasures of earlier in the evening. A crash; the shriek of a woman’s drunken laughter; the deeper bellow of a man’s voice. Had a trestle table been knocked over? From the clatter of pottery and metal it sounded as if it had.
    The wick untrimmed, the candle began to smoke, then gutted out, the only light coming from the strip beneath the doorway.
    “Do not shed tears in public,” Mama had instructed. Well, she was not in public; there was no one here to see her weep.
    Beside her, Æthelred began to snore.

6
    Pallig undressed quietly, not wishing to disturb the woman in the bed or the child sleeping like an innocent angel in her cot. All the same, he