The Price of Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

wait for another cart, laden with baskets of fish, to turn into the side gate of one of the city’s larger hagas before he could make his way into Æthelingstrete.
    A sennight ago, when Ecbert’s coffin had been borne along this route to St. Paul’s Abbey, the streets had been quiet. The ground had been more river than road that day and the air thick with fog and mist, but the men and women who had lined Æthelingstrete to watch the somber procession had stood in silence—a mark of respect for his brother that still moved him.
    It had been ten days since Ecbert had died, yet a dozen times on each of those days he had found himself turning to speak to the brother who had been his near constant companion for as long as he could remember—only to discover yet again that Ecbert was not there. He wondered if he would ever become accustomed to that emptiness. Certainly he had tried. He had thrown himself into his work, overseeing the building of a new wooden tower on the London side of the bridge; it exercised his brain and body well enough, but it did little to fill the void that Ecbert had left behind.
    He rode beneath the wooden archway that marked the entrance to what the Londoners called the Æthelings’ Haga—usually an apt description, although since Ecbert’s death and Edmund’s immediate departure for Wiltshire, he had been the only ætheling in London. That was apparently no longer the case, he concluded, eyeing the lathered mounts in the yard. Edmund must be back.
    He left his horse with a groom and moments later he entered the hall, where he found his brother waiting for him, still cloaked and grimed from travel. Edmund was seated at a table with an ale cup in his hand, and he wore an expression forbidding enough to keep the other men in the hall—slaves, men-at-arms, and trusted companions—at a healthy distance.
    Even on a good day, Athelstan knew, Edmund could be forbidding. He had always been burly, but now, at seventeen, he had outstripped all his brothers in height. Athelstan couldn’t even remember the last time he’d won a wrestling match with Edmund. It had been years ago.
    Going on looks alone, men took care not to cross Edmund.
    The dark, silent one , their grandmother, the dowager queen, had named him. They are always the most dangerous. When he speaks, you would do well to listen.
    At the moment Edmund was staring into his ale cup as if he could read the fate of the world there and he had just discovered that the world was about to end.
    “You look like hell,” Athelstan said, sitting down opposite his brother. And no wonder, considering the tidings he had borne to the king. “How bad was it?”
    Edmund took a long pull from his cup, then set it down and stared at it morosely.
    “He wanted to know every detail,” he said heavily, “so I had to relive it in the telling.” He took a breath and ran a hand through the thick brown hair that set him apart from his Saxon-fair brothers. “One can’t blame him, I suppose, for wanting to make certain that all had been done for Ecbert that could have been.” He drained his cup, then pushed it away from him. “ She came in while I was answering his questions. Hung on every word. Pretended to grieve for Ecbert. As if anyone would believe that she would mourn the death of one who might have stood between her son and the throne.” He scowled at Athelstan. “I am mistaken,” he corrected himself. “You would believe it.”
    “Leave off, Edmund,” he said wearily.
    Emma had ever been a sore point between them. To Edmund she was not a living, breathing woman but a tool of her ambitious brother, the Norman duke Richard, and so a threat to all the sons of the king’s first marriage. And as for him— but he thrust the thought of Emma away from him. She was on his mind far too often as it was.
    “Was the king satisfied that we had done all we could to save Ecbert?” Had they done all that they could to save their brother? The question had been