#viking-hel

Emma protested; their daughter was still a girl, the emperor and his son might wait a few more years for her to be ready. Why was there such haste to throw her into a foreign court where she would be friendless, so young and alone? Her husband did not understand: they had been planning this for years, he said, so what did it matter if Gunhild went this summer or the next? What if the delay caused the emperor’s eye to look elsewhere for a daughter-in-law, what would that mean for the alliance?

She had not wanted to listen to his reasoning—or listen to him at all, in fact. If asked, Emma could not have explained her distress over the emperor’s request, only that it felt like falling into an icy sea, and her husband’s unyielding insistence the hand keeping her from rising to the surface. 

Perhaps that might explain why she spoke to him so coldheartedly, accusing him of caring more about the emperor than his own child. 

That night, during the evening meal, they did not speak, even as they sat surrounded by the chatter of their household and the court in attendance. Nor did she accompany him afterwards to his chamber, as she did almost every other night, but instead directed her ladies to follow her back to her own. 

In the morning, Emma kept to her rooms, claiming an ache in her head. She knew she was behaving like a child herself, foolish and irrational, yet she did not want to yield. To yield would be to give up something vital to her sense of self, even if she could not fully name it. Eventually, she knew, they would have to come to terms, but that would require one of them to take the first step—and she was not yet ready to wave the flag of parley. 

Mid-day finds her sitting by the fireplace in a loose gown, her hair still unbound. There is a knock on the door that can only be his, and as he opens it and steps inside her ladies scatter, leaving him to occupy the empty chair across from hers. 

The king leans forward, warming his hands against the fire, and then turns to look at her. His gaze is direct as ever, those gray-green eyes searching her out, as if he means to listen in on her thoughts. After fifteen years as her husband, perhaps he can. 

“Are you opposed to this marriage?” he asks her. “Is that why you do not want to send Gunhild to Germany?”

“No,” Emma admits, shaking her head. “I know she must go. It’s only—”

She pauses, struck by a memory clear and sharp as a shard of glass. She is in the palace at Winchester, a young bride of less than a week. Waking to a gaggle of foreign voices, she searches for a familiar face—any of the ladies that sailed with her from Normandy—and finds none, only round-faced women speaking Englisc at her as if they expect her to understand. The king is of little help; he can only talk to her through an intermediary, one of his thegns whose mother was French-born. From this stranger she learns the unthinkable: Æthelred has dismissed her ladies, sent them back to Normandy. The king will have no foreign enclave at this court, the thegn tells her. No, she wants to reply. What the king means is, The queen will have nothing of her own at this court. For with a single stroke he has robbed her of every vestige of home, everything familiar; what is she now but a fifteen year old girl set adrift on an island without a single person she might call a friend?

“It is only what?” Canute asks, pulling her back to the present.

She breathes, steadying herself. “I do not want her to be alone.”

“She will not be,” he says, small lines of concern furrowing in his brow. “I will take her myself. We will bring the whole of her household—her servants and companions, her confessor—and I will insist they remain with her.”

Emma nods, her lips pressed into an uncertain line. “What do you know of the boy? Henry?”

“His father tells me he is learning Latin and some Greek, and that he has a fondness for hawking.” He shrugs, his expression turning sheepish. “I only met him the once, when he was eleven. He seemed kind enough.” 

Canute pulls his chair against the stone floor, coming close enough that he can sit facing her and take her hands in his. They are warm, wide enough to cover hers entirely. 

“I can take Gunhild to Germany in the summer, but perhaps the emperor will agree to wait a few years for the marriage. We can give her time to learn the place, to get to know her young husband. Would you agree to that?”

It is good they are so similar because she can recognize this offering of an olive branch for exactly what it is—and just as easily be filled with the desire to extend one of her own. Emma rises from her chair and moves to find a seat in his lap, reaching out to hold his head in between her hands. This man, her husband—she knows that he is nothing like his predecessor. Yet she had allowed herself to be caught so tightly in the past that she could not see what was right in front of her. 

“I am sorry for what I said yesterday,” she tells him. “Gunhild is lucky to have you. I am lucky to have you.”

Canute wraps his broad arms around her, tilting his head back just a touch to take her in. 

“Such sweet words from my wife.” His gaze turns warmer, the corners of his mouth starting to curl into a knowing smile. “I am beginning to think we should disagree more often.”