The Betrothed Sister

by Carol McGrath

  This was no simple request such as a baby’s name or that her child would be christened in an English christening robe. He gently pushed her off his lap and rose from the bench. Slowly he paced the length of the room, his boots tapping as he walked. His raven’s head was bent in thought and his hands were folded in front of his long gown. Occasionally he raised a hand to touch the cross he wore about his neck. Something about the frown on his countenance and the sound of his boots clacking over the tiled floor made her feel extremely uneasy. Thea let go a sigh, sensing that she was about to be rebuffed.

  Vladimir sank down beside her again, lifted her hand and kissed it. ‘It is not a decision for me alone. The boyars have a council and even our freed men have a say. It would have to be their decision.’ Vladimir pulled her close. ‘I shall send a letter to the King of England asking him to free your younger brother into our care, though I suspect he will refuse.’ He took both her hands into his own. She felt gripped by sorrow for Godwin, for her sister in Wilton Abbey, for her mother in a nunnery in Canterbury and she felt sad for Ulf because she suspected that he would not be set free.

  Vladimir continued, ‘We cannot spare any soldiers for a foreign war.’ He looked at her with sadness in his eyes. ‘Perhaps we can organise a ship to bring back survivors from the English rebellions, those who need a new land for their home, though unless they have their own way of living in Rus lands as mercenaries or as craftsmen, they could find life very difficult here.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘No but. Edmund is welcome here as a merchant, but only that. He cannot interfere in our political decisions. You, my wife, must not involve yourself in the ruling of our lands. You are mistress of your terem. As such you will rule fairly and by example, just as I, my father and uncles and cousins rule our land. Your task is to guide our children and our noblewomen. That is all I ask. Our women do not meddle in politics. Do you understand?’ He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed them. ‘It is not right for women to try to behave like men and you are now a Russian princess. You will rule the politics of your terem and oversee my household and I know you will do this well. The women already respect you and, well, Lady Olga. I think you handled that incident very well too.’

  Thea bit back her protest. She did not want a quarrel. ‘I had to ask.’ A feeling of irritation welled up deep inside her. A snake had entered her garden. She was a woman and a Rus princess who must not think about politics. It was unfair. For now she would hold her tongue but things must change if they were to continue to live in harmony. ‘I shall tell Edmund,’ she said aloud.

  ‘No, I shall,’ he said. ‘In a month you will travel to Pereiaslavl. The skald, Padar, requests that Gudrun and their child accompany you. Will that make you happy?’

  ‘I am glad to have Gudrun back. Even though she has her own household now, she will always be part of mine. She dwells in my heart.’

  ‘Not as much as I, my sweet.’ He pushed his hands into her hair and drawing her close kissed her forehead and then her lips as if to silence her. She returned the kiss but as they kissed she remembered how she had once lived through a terrible siege. She had learned too much about politics to not be curious about how a country worked. Her grandmother had been a politician. Her mother had been courageous. That night she wished as she looked through her chamber window at a rising full moon that one day she, too, would prove her worth in the world of men.

  Part Three

  Marriage

  Oleg and Boris advanced on Chernigov. Vsevolod joined Iziaslav in Kiev and these brothers reunited …

  Oleg and Boris led pagans to attack the Rus. Many Rus died …

  Boris, Oleg and their uncles met in Battle at Nezhata meadow where the carnage was terrible and Boris fell … Iziaslav died, struck on the shoulder by a spear …

  The Russian Primary Chronicle, entry 1078, translated and edited by Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olberg P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor, Medieval Academy of America, Cambridge, Mass. 1930

  28

  Kiev, December 1076

  Sviatoslav died from the cutting of a sore and was buried in Chernigov.

  Russian Primary Chronicle, entry, 1076, trans. and edited by Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olberg P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor, 1930.

  For almost five years, despite many separations, Thea and Vladimir’s apparent happiness was smiled upon by all who knew them. They were sensual by nature but it was more than that – Thea delighted in his vigour, determination and in his sense of justice. He spoke many languages and knew poetry. They discussed Greek poets long into the night. She learned to speak Russian with increased fluency. He was ambitious but not overly so. He was fair-minded. Often he discussed matters of law with her but when she tried to change his opinion the discussions ceased. To Thea’s mind, his one fault was that for him her main role in their partnership was that of wife and mother but as the years passed she began to possess an increasingly strong sense of her identity as an admired and clever princess of a great land. She was her father’s daughter and she wanted to rule.

  She knew that Vladimir admired her intelligence as well as her beauty. One day, she decided, he would need her clever mind to help him rule Russia.

  The merchants of Kiev and many of the noblemen expected that in time Vladimir would be their grand prince. Thea heard whispers to this effect amongst her ladies, many of whom visited their families who lived in the city’s great houses. Katya, too, carried stories to Thea from her merchant father, Dimitri, who returned often from his travels to dwell with her Rus mother in a grand house situated below the hill of palaces, in the merchant’s quarter in Kiev.

  This Christmastide everybody was anxious – merchants, noblemen and Prince Vsevolod’s immediate family, in fact, all of Kiev. Prince Sviatoslav lay ill. It had been only three years since he had seized his brother Iziaslav’s throne and Iziaslav was thrown out of Kiev for a second time. For three years Sviatoslav ruled. It was not to last. Over this past Christmas, the sense of apprehension amongst the nobility reminded Thea of the atmosphere in King Edward’s palace of Westminster ten years before when he lay dying. Who would succeed to England’s throne? This question had caused the terrible succession crisis that had eventually caused her father’s death, their family to be scattered, her exile, and her younger brother Ulf, now sixteen years old, then six years of age, to be taken into Normandy, never to be set free.

  Padar, a regular visitor to Thea’s terem, said that Iziaslav had it coming. He had raised taxes to build monasteries. He had helped the poor but he refused to provide the merchants with an army to protect them as they traded south along the Dnieper. That decision was unpopular. Tribes from the Steppe lands were attacking ships and demanding tribute. Padar insisted that Iziaslav was weak and Prince Vladimir agreed, but he considered also that his father was foolish for supporting Uncle Sviatoslav and his greedy sons Boris and Oleg. Gleb had already quietly moved south, away from trouble.

  When the Kiev Council, led by Sviatoslav and Vsevolod, demanded that Grand Prince Iziaslav leave the city or face imprisonment, Prince Iziaslav had taken as much gold and jewels from the palace as he could pack into fifty closely guarded carts and had set off for Poland, his wife’s country. The Poles who had helped Iziaslav the first time he was exiled from his kingdom chose not help him this time. They refused him sanctuary and made an alliance with Prince Sviatoslav. Iziaslav found his sanctuary in Italy.

  Who knew what could happen now, Thea mused, if Sviatoslav died. Padar said that Sviatoslav’s sons, who ruled in Chernigov, would fight to inherit the throne of Kiev. The Kiev Council had found Sviatoslav as much of a disappointment as his elder brother. Padar reported how this grand prince did not protect the merchants from attacks on the River Dnieper from the Cuman tribes. Earl Connor complained that Sviatoslav refused them guards. Edmund growled that if Prince Vladimir had real courage he would raise an army and throw the Sviatoslav family out of Kiev.

  ‘Hush, Edmund you speak treason. Anyway they spend most of their time in Chernig
ov.’ Then, Thea would warn, ‘Have a care where you say such things. There are spies everywhere.’

  Edmund would simply say, ‘The Cumans attack our ships. Soon it will be our cities.’ Thea noted how Russian her brother had become but even so he had no rights in this his adopted country. Despite the attacks the triumvirate of Padar, Connor and Edmund thrived and they grew wealthy.

  Now they were reassured as Sviatoslav weakened. It was increasingly clear from court talk that the boyars would have none of Sviatoslav’s family to rule if he died. They might instead select the fair-minded and astute Vsevolod as their new grand prince, rather than the Sviatoslavichi sons, whom they considered sly imitations of their father.

  Thea sat in her sewing chamber stitching a shirt for her husband. Companionably, she shared the window seat with Katya as the room was warm. The isinglass kept the draughts out and allowed a little natural light to seep through. Harold, her first son, only eighteen months old, was contentedly playing with wooden animals that Earl Connor had given him as a gift. Wrapped in soft furs, her tiny baby, Iziaslav, was sleeping in his cradle as his nurse applied a gentle pressure with her felt-slippered foot to the cradle’s rockers.

  Snow twirled against the window. Thea loved watching the snow fall. It would soon be piled up about the courtyards, until a few months later it would melt into unpleasant rivers of slush. But for a time it was beautiful, like a fairy tale.

  She stretched her hands towards the coals that glowed in one of the many braziers the servants had brought into her large sewing chamber earlier that afternoon. She could feel her forehead crinkle into worry folds. If there was unrest after Sviatoslav died Vladimir might send her to safety in Novgorod? If he did, she decided that she would refuse to go.

  ‘How can it be?’ Katya broke into her thought. ‘That in Russia a prince can only become a grand prince if his father has held the throne in Kiev.’

  Thea smiled, looking over at little Harold. It was an interesting thought since one day, Harold, grandson of King Harold of England, could become the Grand Prince of all Russia.

  She had no love for the grossly overweight, mean-spirited Sviatoslav, nor did she like his sons. She avoided his wife, the German Oda of Trier, whose ladies included Thea’s old enemy, Lady Olga. Every time she thought of Lady Olga, she felt that deadly prick in her knee again and anger seeped into her heart.

  Vladimir had said that Sviatoslav had once been a great warrior and that long ago when he was a little boy, the three brothers, Sviatoslav, Iziaslav and Vsevolod, a young warrior triumvirate, had together fought off Russia’s enemies, wealthy tribes called Cumans who owned enormous sweeps of territory out on the Steppes. His father and uncles were all impressive influences on him, he told Thea, as he grew up. However, as Vladimir explained to Thea, his Uncle Sviatoslav had become greedy and harsh. In truth, he had not been a good influence on Vladimir’s father.

  If Uncle Sviatoslav died of the sore that had caused poison to seep through his blood, there would be a terrible dispute between her father-in-law, Vsevolod, and his nephews. They would never agree over succession to Kiev’s throne. Life in Kiev could become dangerous. Yes, Vladimir would think of his baby sons and send her to safety.

  ‘If Prince Sviatoslav dies, my father says that his sons will not inherit Kiev,’ Katya was saying.

  ‘Prince Vsevolod will be grand prince. Sviatoslav stole his brother’s throne. Find out all you can, Katya. Your father is the keeper of many secrets.’ She wished that Vladimir would confide political secrets to her. If he had, she would not have to listen to the constant speculation that flew about the terem like fire racing through a wheat field.

  Thea bit off a length of blue silk from a spool and rethreaded her needle. ‘He may not die,’ she said as she hemmed the shirt. She smiled over at the four ladies who were embroidering close to the corner stove. ‘My ladies will soon want supper. Katya, go downstairs to the kitchens and tell the cooks that since the sewing room is warm, we shall dine here this afternoon rather than in the refectory. Take Harold with you. He might like a ginger pastry.’

  Harold tottered over and took hold of Katya’s hand when Thea mentioned the words ginger pastry. Not even glancing at his mama, he toddled by Katya’s side to the stairway. A listener. Intelligent child. He knows what he wants. Thea could hear him chattering nonsense as Katya picked him up to carry him down the wooden staircase. He looks like Edmund, she thought, and Edmund looks like our father. My father lives on through my son. She stretched her feet towards the brazier and, as she became mesmerised by the baby’s cradle rocking close by, she puzzled the first five years of her marriage. Where had those years gone?

  For a time, she had thought that she could not conceive. She was glad that Vladimir never blamed her. Nor should he, she thought one night when he whispered, ‘We have time,’ as they made love under her silver wolf cover. This bed was reached by steps which Vladimir claimed led him to heaven. Sighing, she remembered how at first she had lain in his arms and traced circles with her fingers amongst the curls that sprouted in a dark entanglement on his chest. All the same, she had longed for a child. Watching Gudrun fall pregnant again caused her to long for her own children with such intensity she thought she was losing her sense of herself inside this one particular longing.

  Gudrun told her that it was because her husband was never with her at the right time during her moon cycle. Thea tried various remedies. She wore prayers on her girdle. She carried a small crystal ball in her belt purse as a charm to aid conception. Katya came to her with a remedy her mother swore by. ‘On the Holy Icon of St Margaret, she swears this recipe will work,’ Katya declared.

  ‘What recipe, Katya? I have no time for spells or concoctions anymore. None work.’

  Katya said with conviction, ‘This might. My lady, do try it. Take the testicles of an uncastrated pig and dry them and make a powder. If you drink this with wine after the purgation of your menses and cohabit with your lover, my mother says you will conceive.’ Katya procured the powder and insisted that her mistress try it.

  When Thea threw the powder away, she had not the heart to tell Katya that she had rejected her mother’s help. She attended the Cathedral of St Sophia with regularity. There, in the golden light that hung as long shafts at midday Sext, Thea knelt before the jewelled icons depicting her favourite saints, St Margaret, St Cecilia, St Sophia and St Theodosia, their gilded faces illuminated by a hundred glowing candles. She prayed for a child, and as she prostrated herself in prayer she felt the saints’ almond-shaped eyes looking down on her with sympathy. Surely they were listening to the longing she held within her heart?

  They moved to Smolensk north of Kiev and east of Novgorod for a couple of years. She spent much time with her husband, who had been appointed governor of the region and who received tribute from tribesmen and taxes from merchants. He supervised Council decisions and administered justice. She became pregnant at last.

  When she approached her mid-term Vladimir sent her to Novgorod. It would be better for her to give birth in that city where Princess Anya was in residence. There were more luxuries than in a provincial town like Smolensk which was really just a fortress. At first she had refused to transport the birthing chair that had been gifted to her in Denmark because she associated it with Ingegerd, but when she examined it more closely she saw inscribed on it a prayer to St Margaret of Antioch, saint to birthing mothers. The words, Ease be with you in your labour and may St Margaret protect this mother followed the curving dragon’s tail that circumnavigated the chair’s rim. Since her labour happened to fall in July close to St Margaret’s feast day she knew that she must use it. She called for it and afterwards she considered that not only had it been right to do so, but it was just to add Ingegerd and the Danish princesses as recipients of her future prayers. Forgiveness was a noble emotion and after the safe delivery of her child, she felt blessed and her sense of forgiveness towards those who had once been unkind swelled in her proud breast.

  In the bath
-house of Princess Anya’s terem, she gave birth to a boy. They called him Harold, but to please the boyars, his official name was Mstislav. He had slipped from her easily as the candle clock turned between daybreak and the dinner hour and she been thankful for the fortune-blessed, comfortable birthing chair for allowing her such ease.

  She had not attended her son’s christening. Vladimir had not visited her until ten days after the birth. This was another tradition that made her cross but then such traditions existed in England also. By this time the bath-house, where she had given birth and the terem chamber, where she slept and ate, were purified. The purification ritual took place on St Margaret’s feast day. The priest stood on the threshold, muttered prayers and sprinkled holy water over everything in the chamber including herself. Afterwards she, to her great relief, was churched and permitted to move freely around the fortress.

  Importantly her husband, who had travelled to Novgorod to be close to his wife and his son, returned to her bed. They did not have intercourse for another month but again Lady Fortune smiled on her. Fifteen months later, Thea gave birth to a second child, another son using the twice-blessed birthing chair. They named him Iziaslav for his banished uncle. He was two months old when she had come out of seclusion just in time for Kiev’s Christmas feasts, just in time to know that her life at court was about to change. Importantly, now, she was able to talk with Padar and Earl Connor and consider their thoughts on the grand prince’s illness.

  Padar was often in the north buying furs or selling spices, nuts and oils from Byzantium. Edmund returned to Ireland promising to return soon. Earl Connor, who lived mostly in Novgorod, married at last. He had chosen one of the English exiles, a flaxen-headed young widow whose rich merchant husband had been executed by Bishop Odo of Bayeux in York. The merchant had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and was accused of hiding English rebels. The widow had escaped with her baby son and with as much jewellery and silver as she could secrete in her luggage. She came to Russia on a rescue ship that Vladimir had organised with Earl Connor.