The Betrothed Sister

by Carol McGrath

  Vladimir appeared to be looking for her. Women, some younger than she, were exchanging appraising looks as they watched the handsome prince’s every movement. Two boyars bowed to Prince Vladimir and excused themselves. Thea watched from behind her filmy veil as they hurried to join their wives. Her back so rigid that it ached, she waited patiently on her bench. Still Olga did not make the introduction.

  One of the prince’s servants bent down and spoke to Lady Olga, who nodded and came to Thea’s side followed by a tall, thin nobleman. Vladimir stood back watching and waiting. Closer up, it appeared that her prince was slim, athletic, serious-faced. His hair was dark and tied back in a clasp. She tried not to stare, though she knew that she need not worry because with her high head-dress and veil he could not see her eyes.

  She stood when Lady Olga spoke. ‘Princess Gita, this man is the father of my children. He is my husband and he is also Prince Vsevolod’s steward. He is Lord Michael and he will introduce you to Prince Vladimir. Then, I am afraid that, Princess, you must retire with the other young ladies, those who are not greeting their husbands today.’

  Thea could feel everyone’s eyes upon her as the prince, who had in a trice crossed the room, was already by Thea’s side. He bowed to her. She sank to her knees before him. He raised her up and turning to the white-haired boyar said in perfect English, ‘I expect you must have conversation for your wife, Michael. I wish to speak with Princess Gita privately in the garden.’ He addressed Lady Olga. ‘One of your ladies may follow at a suitable distance.’ Olga looked surprised. The prince smiled. ‘Do not fear. I shall not upset the princess, nor shall I ravish her, though she looks delightful. I think the gown might get in the way, never mind the veil.’ He bowed again to Thea. ‘I will not impose myself on her for longer than it takes for us to feel comfortable in each other’s company.’

  The silence that followed could be sliced with a sharp knife.

  Michael broke the hush by saying, ‘It is not seemly.’

  Prince Vladimir raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Oh, well … as you wish, my Prince.’ The steward glanced desperately about the room at the older women until his eyes lit on Lady Sabrina, a widow whom Thea had come to like more and more as they sewed together in the mornings.

  He summoned Lady Sabrina from the flock of women. ‘Lady Sabrina will accompany the princess’s maids, yourself, and Princess Gita into the garden.’ He glared at Vladimir. ‘I warn you, Prince, the bells for Nones will chime soon. You have little time.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Less time than it takes to sup a bowl of kvass.’

  Thea, delighted, found herself walking through a scented garden shaded by fig trees, accompanied by her handsome prince. Her dream was coming true at last.

  ‘This way,’ Lady Sabrina said, guiding them along. A little further along the garden track she stopped and exclaimed, ‘My roses are in bloom today.’ She clapped her hands. ‘Quick, there is not much time. Go and fetch my cutting shears, run, Gudrun and Katya. They are in the shed in the first terem garden. Go now! These roses must decorate our receiving chambers.’ Dismay haunted the girls’ faces. Sabrina fixed them both with a firm look. ‘Go through the herb garden and no one will see you. It is shorter.’ The girls glanced at Thea for assurance. She nodded. They sped off to fetch the cutters.

  Lady Sabrina pointed to a stone bench by a shady fall of vines. ‘My lord, if you and Princess Gita sit there you will have a moment to yourselves. I shall be just by the fig trees here, just for a moment or two.’

  The prince smiled conspiratorially at Lady Sabrina. Thea realised that while she may not be out of sight, she had turned her back on them and was poking around bushes filled with pure white roses. Her prince led Thea to the stone bench. Amused at this break with terem rules and tedious protocol, Thea relaxed and decorously arranged her skirts, determined to show no simpering coyness. She held her head high. After all she was an English princess.

  ‘Lady Sabrina was my mother’s friend,’ the prince began. ‘She came from Constantinople as a girl of fourteen and I have known her all my life. Her husband died in my father’s service. She is doing us a kindness today.’

  His English was fluent. He appeared composed and Thea decided to match his composure with her own self-possession. She looked directly at him through her veil. ‘She is very kind to me.’

  He said, ‘I am sorry not to have come to Novgorod before. But, we have troubles in our lands.’ He lifted her hand. She tingled at his touch. She could not snatch her hand away.

  ‘Are you happy in Princess Anya’s terem?’ he asked politely.

  Thea replied in halting Russian. ‘The women are kind. I am busy.’

  ‘And how are you busy?’ He gently placed her hand on the bench.

  She glanced about the garden before answering. No one was in sight, not even Lady Sabrina who had disappeared amongst the rose bushes. She said, ‘I stitch a rushnyk for my wedding day. I learn Russian. I pass time tending the herbs in the garden and …’

  ‘You like gardens?’ He leaned forward to ask the question.

  ‘And music. I play the harp and sing and I tell stories,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Your voice is musical. Do you sing like a nightingale also?’ He moved closer to her. In that moment she was glad of the veil. It concealed the blush that was fast rising up her neck.

  ‘That is for others to judge.’

  ‘Lady Gita,’ he said with urgency in his voice. ‘Sabrina will only allow us a moment or two. No one will know.’

  ‘Know what?’ He was staring into her face, trying to see through her veil. Suppressing a longing that was creeping up through her body, she moved further along the bench. She realised what he meant. He wanted to see her face.

  ‘May I?’ he said. She nodded. Slowly and gently, his long gentle fingers lifted back her veil and he looked at her face. He gasped. ‘By the Virgin, you are beautiful.’ He touched her cheek, her hair where it was plaited by her left ear. He touched her ear. ‘My people think red hair brings great fortune.’

  Just a breath later, as if he were a dragonfly flitting around the head of a flower, he dropped her veil again. He folded his hands in his lap. ‘Princess Gita,’ he said slowly, ‘it may be some time before we can marry. I wish to get to know you. What I mean is that I just want to speak with you, to understand you. It must be different for you here, and, you see, I do not wish to find a stranger in my marriage bed.’

  She did see. It was odd to share your sleep with someone you had never talked to before. Yet it happened all the time. In noble families it was expected. ‘It is the custom. If we break with it I could be in trouble.’

  He moved closer to her again. ‘But if I can arrange a meeting, would you meet with me secretly?’

  Thea loved his flouting of these stupid rules. ‘If the meeting were like today, in a church or a garden, perhaps it can be possible.’ She desperately wanted to meet him secretly.

  ‘I shall send you a message. No one must know.’ He frowned. ‘Importantly Lady Olga must not know anything. Do not speak to my stepmother. I shall leave a message for you concealed by the vine behind this bench.’ He reached behind and separated the vine from which hung ripening grapes and showed Thea a little niche set into the wall behind them. ‘I used it when I was a child in the terem. I hid things here: little treasures, a shell from the shore – if I listened to it I could hear the sea – a scrap of cloth that I imagined was my own relic as it came from Byzantium – my mother told me it long ago belonged to the gown of a great pope from Rome. I had a little jewelled knife too. Look for a piece of birch wood. Can you read and write?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Reply to my note with yes or no. Do not sign your name.’

  Lady Sabrina had placed six cut roses in Gudrun’s basket. The bells for Nones had begun chiming. Lady Olga was hurrying through the fig trees followed by her skinny husband. ‘There you are. Thea, come with me.’ Her suspicious eyes surveyed them all. They lit on the basket of roses, the cutters and
the three women by the rose bushes. The prince rose. ‘Thea? My lady, why does Lady Olga call you Thea?’

  ‘It is the name my friends use for me.’

  ‘Then I shall use it also.’

  The prince bowed and moved into the fig trees, Lord Michael in attendance. Thea stood calmly with Katya and Gudrun. Lady Sabrina smiled through eyes as innocent as those of the Virgin Mary. Olga turned on her slippered heel and briskly led the ladies back through the gardens, past the long, low receiving hall and the church by the poplar trees, to the door that led into the terem.

  Thea bubbled with excitement. She wondered when he would leave her a message. And he had called her beautiful. Now she had a secret. She hugged her secret to herself as she followed Lady Olga through the terem doorway.

  17

  1071

  For weeks Thea walked alone in the garden with the sole purpose of discovering a letter, but although she often slipped her hand into the niche in the wall she never discovered one. Had her prince forgotten her? Official reports arrived from the north saying that Prince Vladimir was keeping peace amongst the tribes. She had expected her wedding to take place the following summer but autumn had passed and Christmas had arrived and gone. No messengers came to order her to Kiev. No date was set for her wedding. She felt as if their encounter had been a dream. She recollected how Padar had said the prince was aloof. Yet he had not seemed so when they had met. As for Padar, he was trading in the north and before he had set out with Earl Connor, he had pledged himself to Gudrun. ‘I shall marry you, little dove, on my return,’ he had promised and Thea hoped that they would set up home together and find happiness in their new Russian world. For now Padar’s betrothal was a secret but he had said, ‘I declare my troth to you, Gudrun, before our princess. She is my witness.’ It was enough. To Thea’s relief Gudrun began to eat again.

  She forgot her own longings as her thoughts moved to him and hoped that he was not trading too close to the northern battles, because if anything happened to Padar, Gudrun’s heart would break into a million pieces. She whispered a prayer to St Theodosia. ‘Beloved saint, bring him back to us soon.’

  Thea took lessons from the Bishop of Novgorod so she could understand the liturgy of the Rus Church. As church services were sung in Rus, she was quickly improving her language skills. Lady Olga supervised her lessons in deportment, forcing Thea to glide up and down the terem stairs with prayer books balanced on her head so that she learned to walk in a stately manner. ‘If you drop these the bishop will send you back to Denmark,’ she threatened unreasonably. Although Thea felt tears stinging the backs of her eyes she never betrayed her true emotions to Olga. She proudly glided about the tower pretending not to care.

  During the long, snowy winter slaves lit stoves every day. The noble ladies gathered around these to sew, converse and practice their musical instruments. Thea was amused when they teased her about her handsome prince. They would surround her as if she were the bee in the centre of the hive. ‘He will come soon, Thea,’ one or other would say. ‘Your duck and your drake are almost ready. He must come for you this summer.’

  ‘When he returns he will bring his handsome captains with him,’ another young girl remarked with hope in her voice.

  ‘You will need attendant maidens for your wedding day, Princess Gita. Choose me,’ they all would chorus.

  ‘But how can I choose, you all are so lovely?’ Thea would reply pragmatically.

  Princess Anya told the girls to leave off teasing Thea. ‘Girls, I shall help Princess Gita choose,’ she said. ‘There are six of you maidens. We shall have a competition.’

  Olga frowned, though she never gainsaid Princess Anya.

  The girls were beset with enthusiasm. A competition would ease their boredom when days stretched ahead like long winter icicles. ‘We shall choose those who can tell us the best story,’ Princess Anya announced because so many noble ladies begged to be Thea’s maidens on her wedding day.

  ‘Who will judge?’ Thea asked.

  ‘Your skald could judge when he returns to Novgorod,’ Anya said. She set her sewing aside and folded her hands in her lap. A smile played about her mouth. ‘You all speak of desire, though often it is impossible. You must marry where your guardians and families decide. So let us have a little fun with storytelling. Girls, you can write and you can read. You will write down a story of your choice. We shall send your stories to the skald.’ Princess Anya picked up the chemise she was stitching for Eupraxia.

  Thea said, ‘I can help Padar decide.’

  The girls agreed and began to secretly compose their tales.

  As Katya moved about the fortress, in and out of the terem, she was able to listen at doors. She caught snatches of conversations every time she carried their linen basket to the fortress laundry. Many of the laundrywomen had husbands in the prince’s army. Soon she was able to report that Prince Vsevolod and Vladimir were extending their territories north of Novgorod. The tribes dwelling in the woods were more like trolls than Slavs. In return for protection they made peace with the Russian princes and accepted them as overlords. Vladimir would return soon.

  In March just as snows melted into slush, on her return from the church by the garden wall, Thea could not resist looking behind the woody empty vine. She felt around, her hand numbed by the cold, her glove in the other. There was something there. It was wrapped in oiled sheepskin. She withdrew the small package. At last, at long last. She glanced about the snow-dripping garden and thrust it into the purse that hung from her belt.

  On entering the terem workroom she sat amongst the other women for a moment, and then, with pretended urgency, she said, ‘I must excuse myself today, Lady Olga. I am unwell.’

  ‘Unwell, Thea? You don’t look poorly. What ails you?’

  ‘My menses have come, I think.’ She gripped her stomach. ‘Early, as it happens.’ Lady Olga knew everything and she knew when Thea needed rags.

  ‘Umm, you must rest today. I shall send you my maids and a posset.’

  ‘No need, Lady Olga.’ Thea summoned Gudrun and Katya to her side and hurried them down from the sewing room to her chamber. Gudrun made a mistake. In her haste to follow her mistress she forgot to bring the sewing box with its precious needles and threads with her.

  When Thea confided in her two friends, Katya became anxious, wondering how the prince had managed to get the letter into the garden.

  ‘Never mind how, Katya. He has sent me word. Gudrun, stay by the door and keep watch while I read it. It would not surprise me if Olga sends her maid down to my chamber.’ She opened the parcel and withdrew a piece of parchment. ‘Look, Katya, it is in Russian.’

  Nervously, her hands shaking, Katya took the tiny piece of parchment. ‘Princess he has folded it into a bird.’

  ‘I know. I can see that. Just read it to me.’

  Katya unfolded the minute parchment bird and read it aloud. Meet me at noon on Saturday in the Church of St Nicholias. A priest will escort you there from the Church of the Holy Virgin. Wait for him by the icon of Mary Magdalene. Wear simple clothing and a warm mantle. Your maid will accompany you.

  Thea could hardly contain her excitement. ‘Katya, just write yes. Hurry. Then take it to the niche behind the vine in the garden. Be quick.’

  ‘But, my lady …’

  ‘No buts, just do it.’

  Katya just wrote the word Da, yes, on the message. She had just folded it back into the bird shape when the door was pushed open, knocking Gudrun off her feet.

  ‘Careless servant,’ Olga began to say. Thea saw that Lady Olga was carrying her sewing box.

  Gudrun started to apologise. Olga ignored her. She looked critically at Thea and back to Gudrun. ‘And why is your mistress still on her feet? If her time is come, girl, fetch linen paddings from the laundry. Find her a belt and ties.’

  Olga turned to Katya. ‘Unlace your lady’s gown and help her into her bed. Draw the curtains.’ She glared at Thea, ‘You, Princess, are lax with your servants.�
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  ‘My servants are mine to command, my lady. Please leave us.’

  ‘This sewing box was left carelessly in the work room.’ Olga marched past Gudrun and went into the small side cupboard of a room, intending to set the sewing box packed with precious threads on its shelf, beside Thea’s sewing bag.

  Katya took the moment to slip Gudrun the note. Gudrun folded her hands around it and bowed her head humbly. She pushed the note into her sleeve and ran off down the stairs. Katya tried to help Thea to the bed.

  Thea shook Katya off. She hissed through her teeth, ‘I shall deal with that person once and for all.’

  She stood tall as a crane, her head high on her long neck, summoned up her courage and said to Lady Olga as she exited the cupboard, ‘Leave us, Olga. My maids are concerned for me enough as it is without you entering my chamber because of a sewing basket which I intended to send for as soon I was comfortable. Go away. You add to my discomfort.’

  Olga’s eyebrows seemed to cross in her narrow forehead. ‘I hope you never speak to the prince in this manner. His father will provide him with the birch rod on his wedding day,’ she said unpleasantly. ‘You are clearly unprepared to marry one of our most important princes.’ She looked pointedly at the silvery wolfskin that covered Thea’s bed. ‘That is a primitive and unsuitable cover,’ she added nastily.

  Thea gasped at Olga’s appalling threat. She glared at the noblewoman. ‘I am well prepared to greet my future husband on my wedding day. I am trained in music, dance, language, deportment, religion and in the running of a terem household,’ she said archly. ‘Know this, Lady Olga, when I am married I shall have my own household. It will have noblewomen of my choosing. And there are many young and pleasant faces to choose from.’ She waved her hand towards the door. ‘Now, go, my lady. I shall take my meals in my chamber today.’ She waited for a moment while Olga stood rooted to the floor. ‘I do not want to see your servants in my chamber again, ever.’