In short, I itched for her again. Could I, I wondered, give all that up for mere prudence sake? It was Yaroslav who decided the question for me, because the offer of his daughter to Harald meant that Dag’s strategy, even without Dag to guide it, was bearing fruit. What I’d taken on faith so far, I could see happening now. Harald, backed by all the resources of a rich and doting father-in-law, reclaiming Norway from the Danes, installing Yelisaveta as his queen, and sending me home to Iceland a rich and influential man, able to take vengeance at last on the murderers of my family.
I must do nothing to jeopardize that. Let Inge be as innocent as an angel, it no longer mattered. Now, more than ever, loving her could only bring me to grief. Her daughter’s betrothal to the hated Harald would provoke a domestic crisis beyond anything that poor, fond Yaroslav could imagine. I knew Inge that well, at least. And when it came, I had better be clearly on one side or the other, because the fence that I had straddled up till now would be flattened at the first assault. There was no middle ground any more.
No! I told myself. If I ever loved her, I do no more. My allegiance goes where my interest lies. The business between us, whatever it meant for her or for me, is over. On the first day that I set foot in Yaroslav’s dvor I will tell her so. By Christ and Odin I swear it.
How strong, how resolute I felt, having sworn this great oath! How easy when a thousand versts lay between us.
April. The ice broke up in the Dnieper. The Kievans, who, as far as I could see, had done remarkably little all this time in the way of forging weapons or drilling their militia, reluctantly gave us back our liberty.
Prince Yaroslav had done nothing all winter long but moon about ‘his Lady’, forced to bear the burden of government on her frail shoulders these many months. For her sake he had lit candles by the armload and worried himself sick with imaginary fears.
Now, in our fleet of borrowed strugi he made the men bend to their oars just as hard as when we were racing the other direction to Kiev’s rescue. Harald, as I have said, was equally hot to be home: to claim his bride and drive Ingigerd insane with rage. What a consummation of his desires!
And now I, too, was ready. Like a man who has made up his mind to bear an ordeal—to have a rotten tooth pulled or an arrow cut out of his hide—let it come now, I thought. Let there be no more waiting.
Our swift ships devoured the miles to Novgorod.
21
Yelisaveta Bethrothed
The willows that grew by the Volkhov were green with new buds while grey ice floes still bobbed in the water. The subjects of ‘My Lord Novgorod the Great’ jostled one another on the banks, straddled tree limbs, and leaned far over the railing of the painted bridge.
To the thunder of their hurrahs the leading strug tied up to the palace jetty, and their prince, with his splendid young son beside him, hurried down the gangplank. On their heels came Harald and I, leading the Norwegian and Rus druzhiniks, all mingled happily together now. One druzhina, one captain.
Within the palace yard we splashed ankle-deep through the spring mud and halted by the foot of the stairs as Inge came down to meet us. Standing on the bottom step, so as not to soil her shoes, she made the smallest bow to her husband that decency demanded and said, “Yaroslav Vladimirovich, I thank God to see you safely home.”
How strange to hear that voice again—I’d forgotten how low and warm it was, even when—as now—there was little feeling in her words; and again to be reminded of that certain way she had of lifting her chin, and how the corners of her mouth turned slightly downward when she was serious—that and so much more, impossible to put into words: so familiar, and yet I felt as though I were seeing it all for the first time.
She offered her cheek for the obligatory kisses. But Yaroslav’s cheerful countenance clouded over as he took a step nearer her; and I saw why. Her cheeks were hollow and there were dark circles under her eyes. She had always been slim, but she was much too thin now, her pale skin stretched tight over the planes of her face. And her whole bearing was stiff and unnatural, as if only a great effort of the will was keeping her upright. What was the matter with her? Was she ill?
Yaroslav, all sympathy and self-reproach, patted her hand while he called upon God to see what a saint, what a martyr, he had for a wife. With a look of impatience, she withdrew her hand from his anxious grasp and addressed Harald instead, saying: “Boyar, I congratulate you on your new rank and position in our household. Your victory over the accursed pagans would astonish us if we were not already accustomed to expect miracles from you.” This speech was prettily spoken—almost convincing, if you didn’t know how they hated each other. But if she had meant by it to lure Harald into bragging at her husband’s expense, he disappointed her.
“Not my victory, Princess,” he came back just as smoothly; “my part in it was only to carry out my lord’s orders.”
They were both, in fact, being uncommonly polite. Why?
She turned now to me. “And Odd—Thorkelsson, was it?—forgive me, I’ve no head for names.” She favored me with the polite smile one gives to strangers. But before she looked away, her eyes held mine for just a moment longer. They were sick and desperate eyes. I mumbled some reply, I don’t remember what. Fury, haughtiness, false smiles and lying words—all those I had expected, but not this. It took me up short.
Meantime Volodya, the young hero, was being mobbed by his younger brothers and sisters who hung on his arms and legs in transports of excitement. Only Yelisaveta took no notice of him; her glance was for Harald alone. And in a twinkling she and he were hurrying out of sight around the corner of the building. Behind the prince and his lady, we trooped up the stairs to the vestibule and from there into the great hall. Everywhere, I looked around hopefully for Dag but, of course, did not find him. I hadn’t really expected to. Harald had driven away for good the shrewdest and most loyal counselor he would ever have. I found instead Thordis, sitting by the oven with her sewing basket. I told her straight out that Einar Tree-Foot was dead. Her wrinkled old face seemed to crumple like an empty wineskin, but, true northern woman that she was, she asked only if he had shown courage, and when I said he had, she nodded and bent again to her needle. If there were tears later, no one saw them.
Soon after this, Inge beckoned her old nurse to accompany her, and the two women disappeared through the passageway into the seclusion of the tower.
I, too, after having spent so many days and nights without respite in the company of Harald and Yaroslav, craved a little solitude; and I had much to think about. I slipped out of the dvor unobserved and walked to the tavern in Vitkova Street that had been Dag’s favorite. The tavern keeper, who knew me slightly, started in at once with idle questions and ignorant opinions about Kievans and Pechenegs, only ceasing when I turned to the wall with my mug of ale. I drank steadily; without pleasure, but only hoping to numb my brain, for I was suffering agonies of indecision. I must—I would—break with Inge if possible, this very day, as I had sworn to. Yet, even as I formed the thought, I felt my nerve weaken. Could I be so harsh to this frail creature?
Sundown. Time for the feasting to begin. With an unsteady step I made my way back to the palace. To my surprise, there were scores of unfamiliar faces in the hall—Swedes from the Lake Malar district to judge by their accent. What were they doing here? The answer lay with a newcomer at court, a man not much older than myself, by the name of Yngvar Eymundsson. He sat near the head of the table with Harald and me. He was Ingigerd’s nephew, he told us, and had just lately come over with nine ships and four hundred fighting men.
Harald bristled on hearing this, naturally suspecting that this kinsman was Ingigerd’s candidate for Eilif’s replacement. He attacked him with bullying questions: Why was he here? How long was he staying? Was he aware that he was addressing the captain of the druzhina? To all of which Yngvar replied, with a frank and open smile, that he felt privileged to be sitting next to a personage of so high a rank, that he hadn’t any plans really except to seek fort
une and adventure, and that, for the moment, his intention was to study the languages spoken in this part of the world, considering that knowledge to be of the greatest usefulness to a traveler in strange lands.
“Yes, well,” muttered Harald, disarmed for the moment, but still suspicious, “then you want to talk to my skald here. He pitches the local gibberish by the shovelful, I never saw the like.”
With that remark he dismissed us, and leaned across the table to whisper something to Yelisaveta, who was seated facing him. This, in itself, was a remarkable change in affairs: in the past, Inge had always sat the pair so far apart that they could scarcely see each other, let alone converse; had she lost that power now? Or the will to use it, which amounts to the same thing?
I was willing to be distracted from my thoughts and fell into pleasant conversation with Yngvar on the pitfalls of Slavonic, which is a devilish hard language to learn because the words come at you all jumbled up and you can say a thing four or five different ways without changing the sense of it. I recommended to him my practice of studying in bed with a local girl. He laughed and said he would begin at once.
Notwithstanding his suspicions of Yngvar, tonight was Harald’s night, and how he relished it! He struck a fierce pose while I sang the tale of his deeds, and beamed with self-satisfaction as the skull of Tyrakh Khan was passed around from hand to hand. All throughout dinner, in fact, his expression resembled that of a cat who has caught a mouse under its paw and anticipates the pleasure of killing it slowly. This was because he knew something that the rest of us did not.
Presently Yaroslav called for silence. Silence being, as usual, beyond his power to command, he settled for some lessening of the racket, and began in his halting, rambling way—he was rather drunk besides—to say something about Harald, and then about Yelisaveta, and wasn’t it too bad about Eilif Ragnvaldsson … As his meaning began to be perceived, the room suddenly got very still indeed—which made the prince falter at the sound of his own voice.
“Yes, well, as I say, ah, Eilif being dead, God keep his soul, yes, and my beauty, my Yelisaveta, being ripe for wedding and bedding, eh? Ha, ha—”
Hot-Eyed Freya’s girdle, but she was ripe! I’d been noticing her all evening. As Inge sickened, in equal measure had her daughter bloomed. Eight months had turned Yelisaveta into a woman. Surely, those were not the breasts of a maid of fourteen swelling under her gown, nor those the curvaceous hips of a virgin. Gone from her face was the last of its little-girl roundness; I was suddenly aware how much there was of Ingigerd in it.
“And so I, ah, well—when I made Harald Sigurdsson the captain of my druzhina, I gave him leave to sue for my daughter’s hand in marriage. And it seems that he has wasted no time but has done so with the greatest dispatch, just as he pursues all his affairs, by God! And my daughter, with a like promptness, has accepted him. Ah, so there it is. The two of them gave me their glad tidings but an hour ago.”
Across the table Harald’s and Yelisaveta’s eyes met and flashed with wicked joy, as if to say, “We have wounded the dragon to her death!”
“So then,” Yaroslav’s speech lurched to its conclusion, “since she herself is willing, why, I can see nothing in the way of, well, and what d’you say to it my dear,”—Ingigerd had come into the hall only moments before and taken her seat without a word to anyone—“for a mother’s wishes must be consulted too, dear me, yes. Only, it all happened so quickly, don’t you see?”
Harald’s bold gaze shifted to Inge and, in a voice dripping with sarcasm, he said, “Princess, you would not begrudge your daughter the chance to wed her one true love, would you? You of all people?”
He couldn’t resist turning the knife. But if his aim was to provoke an outburst of screaming rage he was cheated of it. She sat statue-still, seeming hardly to breathe. “Husband,” she said very softly, “I should have thought a public feast not the proper setting for a family council, but I yield, as always, to your wisdom. The union of our daughter with Harald Sigurdsson has much to recommend it, yet we should not hurry the consummation of it. Let them spend some months together in courtship—until the New Year, say. And if then they are still of the same mind, why, how could I, or anyone, object?”
The prince heaved a loud sigh of relief and took a long pull at his ale horn.
But Yelisaveta demanded shrilly, “Till the New Year? Till September? And it being only April now? Why, mother, aren’t you anxious to see your grandchildren? The girls will all look like me and the boys like Harald. Won’t that please you? And how you’ll love to dance them on your knees, won’t you, mother?” She threw back her long hair and laughed.
“Yes, well—” said Yaroslav hurriedly, “time enough later to set the date. Now, in God’s name, let us have merriment!” He tipped Harald a wink as if to say, “You see, I told you there’d be no trouble about it.”
Yelisaveta ran to embrace her father, kissing his cheek and mussing his hair. After that, she and Harald danced together for an hour without stopping and everyone stood back to watch how he swung her through the air as lightly as if she were a straw doll.
Ingigerd did not stay to watch.
Her food untouched, she rose to leave. Yaroslav, with the hopeful expression of a devoted hound, clung to her hand, plainly begging to be taken into her bed. I saw her touch her forehead and wince. Full of apology he let her go.
The party lasted nearly until dawn, with much drinking and the customary dirty jokes and songs with which we celebrate these happy occasions.
When I awoke the next afternoon, though my head throbbed and my stomach was sour, I determined to see Inge that day without fail and deliver a parting speech that I had been rehearsing all the way from Kiev. Yesterday’s moment of weakness was banished. Her pitiful condition had taken me by surprise, that was all. Of course, I would gentle the tone a bit from what I’d planned on. I was not a savage, after all. I was no Harald.
He, however, had other plans for me. He wanted to spend a few days at his country estate and, as on other occasions, conscripted me with the men of his bodyguard to attend him. There was no appeal from these invitations. We went down by river because of the mud being still too deep for horseback riding. Yelisaveta was not one of the party. Now that they were practically man and wife, said Harald, it was high time the girl learned that a man’s amusements are his own business and he comes and goes as he likes.
On the second day of our carouse, Harald barked at me, “God damn it, Tangle-Hair, what ails you? You’re no amusement for me at all. Are you in love? That must be it. Well, for Christ’s sake, take your long face out of here, hump the poor girl, whoever she is, and get it out of your system. When I see you next I expect to find you in a better humor.”
So back went I to Novgorod, rowing myself in a small boat, not minding the slowness of my progress, because I knew what I would find when I returned. What must happen would happen tonight. Of that there could be no doubt.
The late afternoon sun was just going down behind Slavno Hill as I tied up my rowboat to the prince’s dock. Passing through the courtyard gate, I walked quickly around the back to the men’s latrine, glancing guiltily behind me (from old habit) as I went.
There was someone there. I retreated behind a corner of the stable and waited for him to leave. All right, now—no! Here came two others. One of them grunted over the trench for what seemed like an hour. Gone at last. Good, no one coming. Now, quickly!
I went straight to the ‘message tree’—the maple sapling beside the latrine where Putscha would by now have tied the bit of thread for me to find. My heart thumped with dread and desire all at the same time. How would I begin? My speech had flown from my head entirely. Never mind, I would find the words when the moment came. Kind but stern. No nonsense. First, she must tell me the truth, the absolute truth, about her schemes against Harald. Once she had done that, well then I would … Where was it? Where was the thread?
I touched every twig within the dwarf’s reach but found nothing. Could a
bird have taken it for its nest? But that had never happened before. More likely a breeze had shaken it loose. It couldn’t have floated far—I knelt down and begin to pick at the sparse blades of grass around the sapling. Nothing.
What in Hel’s Hall was wrong with the woman? Didn’t she want to see me? Of all possibilities, I had never even considered this one. True, my feelings had changed, but I had reasons. What reason could she have?—Yngvar! That must be it. I marked him down as Harald’s replacement—damn it, he was mine! Don’t be an ass—her own nephew? Back to the grass, look again. My fingers scrabbled in the ground. Where was it?
“Lose something, druzhinik?”
“Prince!”
My heart somersaulted into my mouth. He must have it. Had he caught Putscha tying it? Had he flogged the truth of him? Black-Browed Odin defend me! For a long, long moment we stared at each other in silence.
“So, it’s you, Odd Thorvaldsson. I thought it might have been. Wasn’t sure, though. Until now.”
“Prince, I—”
“Glimpsed you from the window. But at that distance, well, my eyes aren’t what they were—
“I can explain—”
Still pretty sharp at close hand, though. What was it, a button? Bothersome things are always coming off. Here, maybe I can spot it for you.”
“What? Oh, yes, yes, my button—but I don’t think it’s here. No, please, Prince, spare your knees, it doesn’t matter, really.”
“Well, if you’re sure?”
“Quite sure. Thank you, though. Thank you, sir.”
He faced the trench and pissed. I wiped my sleeve across my forehead.
“Funny you being here, Odd Thorvaldsson. Isn’t Harald still visiting his estate?”
“I was unwell, Prince. I came back early.”
“What was it, touch of fever? It’s all these spring mists and stagnant water, you know. Perhaps I could make you up a drink of—”
The Ice Queen Page 20