‘That would be very kind. I swear to fill it as fast as I can. I will fight every day God grants to me.’
Elizaveta smiled.
‘Not every day, surely? You must rest. And, besides, you need not justify yourself to me.’
‘Oh but I should, if you are to be my treasure-keeper.’
‘I? Oh Prince, I did not mean . . .’
‘Call me Harald, please. I do not deserve the title Prince, not yet.’
At that, though, Elizaveta shook her head.
‘It does not work that way. A man need not deserve a title, for it is his birthright and it is more in honour of his forebears that he carries it than of himself.’
Harald blinked.
‘You speak well, Princess. But he should surely live up to it?’
‘As I am sure you will, Harald.’
‘You will have the gold to prove it, Princess.’
‘Elizaveta.’
She blushed as he bowed low but thankfully at that moment the burnished gong behind them was rung for the druzhina to be seated to dine and she was able to escape – though not for long.
‘Harald, you will sit at my wife’s right.’ Yaroslav ushered his guest into the favoured spot. ‘My daughters shall sit with you and your good men. No, no, do not protest. You are my honoured guest, whatever hand fate has dealt you, and you will share our table.’
The three men bowed low and moved to their seats. Elizaveta slid in between Harald and Halldor with Anastasia and Ulf beyond. She glanced at her sister and for once the pair were joined in delighted disbelief. Usually they were fortunate to find seats halfway down the hall but tonight they had somehow stepped up to their father’s side and Elizaveta was determined to make the most of it.
As the meal advanced, a first course of spiced river-fish giving way to a rich game pie layered with forest mushrooms, Elizaveta began to feel almost dizzy with the effect of concentrating on the jumble of conversations around her. She barely touched her pie but was still not hungry when the servants cleared it away and lifted a spit-roasted boar from the central hearth, parading it around the assembled company before setting it on a golden oak table to carve.
To her left, her mother and Harald were deep in talk of people Elizaveta had only ever heard mentioned in Ingrid’s stories. She longed to learn more but feared demonstrating her own ignorance so she turned to Halldor on her right who had, until now, been buried in his food.
‘Are you also from Norway, my lord?’ she asked politely.
Halldor shook his funny balding head.
‘Nay, Princess. I am neither a lord nor a Norwegian. I am from Iceland.’
‘Iceland?’ So that explained his language – more guttural than Prince Harald’s, though curiously melodious. ‘Is that not very far away?’
‘Not so far under a strong sail. My good friend Ulf hails from there also.’
His ‘good friend’ leaned over, his dark curls bobbing wildly.
‘What is he saying of me?’ he demanded, his tone similar to Halldor’s, though lighter and more full of laughter. ‘What scurrilous tales is Halldor telling you, Princess?’
‘None, truly,’ Elizaveta replied. ‘He says simply that you are both Icelanders.’
‘Ah, well, that much is true – though the similarities end there, do they not, Hal?’
‘You are both soldiers,’ Elizaveta objected.
‘We are,’ Halldor agreed. ‘Both Varangians, both sworn to the service of young Harald, both fleeing for our lives from Cnut, Emperor of the North – we have much in common, Ulf, friend.’
Ulf smiled wryly.
‘True, true, yet I am not half troll.’
Elizaveta gasped.
‘You’re half troll?’ she asked Halldor.
The hunched man’s brow furrowed.
‘You could believe that?’
Elizaveta’s heart lurched at her foolishness as Ulf laughed his big, pink laugh.
‘I would like it to be true,’ she said quickly, ‘for my mother has told me all manner of wonderful things of trolls.’
‘Like that they eat children?’ Ulf suggested merrily. ‘And that they hide in caves and cleave to the night and are very, very ugly?’
Ulf laughed again and clapped Halldor on the back. Elizaveta felt even worse but Halldor did not seem ruffled.
‘Or mayhap that they have hair so wild you’d swear their brains had all fallen out,’ he shot back at his comrade.
Anastasia’s blonde head bobbed from one man to the other, uncertain whether to be horrified or amused.
‘Are trolls real?’ she asked.
Ulf, catching her fearful eyes, shook his head kindly.
‘Nay, lass, I think they are only real in stories.’
‘And therefore very real indeed,’ Halldor countered instantly. ‘Shall I tell you of them?’
Elizaveta heard Ulf groan but Anastasia was nodding keenly and Halldor was sitting back on their bench, his neck unfurling from his tight shoulders and his brow lifting as his hazel eyes lit up like autumn sunshine.
‘I met a troll once, when I was but a boy about your age, Princess Anastasia.’
‘You did? Where? Where, sir?’
‘In the forests, of course. I was hunting birds with my new sling and strayed too far in, beyond the sunlit copses at the edges and deep along the paths until they were paths no more but just faint imprints of brave footmarks. The trees leaned their branches over my head to pick at my hair and stuck out their roots to catch my feet and the vines reached out from the bark like snakes, keen to plunge their fangs into my flesh.’
His hands were moving now, casting shapes in the smoky air, drawing them into the pictures his throaty voice was creating and, despite herself, Elizaveta was lost – far away from the clatter of Kiev and down a dark, hidden path with Halldor.
‘The troll?’ she whispered.
‘Ah, the troll! He was in a tangle of roots at the base of a great oak. I saw his eyes first – big as harvest moons and every bit as yellow – and they were following me, tracing my stumbling progress, getting ready . . .’
‘Ready to pounce?’ Anastasia asked, her voice squeaking.
‘So I thought, child, but no – ready to run. He feared me, you see. They are quiet creatures, trolls, happiest left to their own funny little ways. It is only when cornered that they lash out.’
‘But you did not corner him, Halldor?’
‘Nay, lass. I ran screaming and he ran screaming and I went sprawling over a root and he, more fleet-footed on his tiny toes, leaped over me and straight up a giant pine, his long nails leaving scratch-trails all the way up the thin bark. And then he was gone.’
‘Gone,’ Anastasia breathed, delighted.
Elizaveta, pulled out of the trance of his storytelling, looked sceptically at Halldor.
‘You made that up,’ she accused.
He smiled.
‘Maybe I did, maybe I did not, but whilst it lasted it was real, was it not?’
Harald turned their way.
‘Halldor spinning yarns again?’ he asked Ulf.
‘’Fraid so,’ Ulf agreed but Anastasia was having no criticism.
‘It was a fascinating tale,’ she said stoutly and Elizaveta was glad of it.
‘He speaks well,’ she agreed.
‘He does that,’ Harald said. ‘A good tale brings old Hal here to life in a way that it takes most men ten horns of ale to achieve.’
‘Then he is lucky,’ Elizaveta said.
Harald considered.
‘I warrant he is, Princess. In Ringerike where I was raised . . .’
‘In Norway?’
‘Yes, in Norway, in the south, just above the great fjord. There people value stories very highly, art too. My mother always told me that poetry is real tales with stronger detail, just as art is real pictures in brighter colours.’
‘Lies, you mean,’ Ulf fired at him.
‘Half-truths,’ Harald allowed, ‘but the better half. Oh come, Ulf, our st
ories are all we will leave behind in the world when we are gone to dust; surely we must make them as good as we can?’
‘By our deeds,’ Ulf agreed gruffly, ‘but not with fancy words.’
‘But “fancy” words exalt our deeds.’ Harald turned to Elizaveta. ‘Ulf likes things plain,’ he told her.
‘And you?’
‘I do not seek to create my life with words but I see no fault in honouring it with them. Poetry is a great skill.’
‘A great skill that will not keep you alive in battle,’ Ulf grumbled.
‘No,’ Harald agreed, ‘but one that will keep your memory alive long after the battle is done.’
Ulf grunted again but smiled and Elizaveta had the feeling that this was a debate they had held many times before and would hold many times again.
‘Well I like a good story, well told,’ she dared to assert.
‘Then you shall have one, Princess. Hal – tell the hall of Stikelstad.’
‘No!’ Ulf protested. ‘No, Harald, we lost.’
‘We fought the odds,’ Harald allowed, ‘and for once the odds defeated us but we live to fight again – though my brother, God bless his soul, does not, nor his banner either. The enemy tore it down but we will, one day, raise a new one and until then the tale deserves to be told, to remind us of our duty and to honour his memory. Would you like to hear of our battle, Grand Prince?’
‘Gladly,’ Yaroslav agreed. ‘It will give our stomachs a chance to find a little space for the pastries. Please, my lord . . .’
Halldor rose.
‘I am no lord, Sire,’ he said quietly.
‘Maybe not,’ Yaroslav countered, ‘but if you tell a good tale, I shall make you a count.’
Halldor glanced disbelievingly at him but, as the great hall fell silent and turned his way, he drew himself up and Elizaveta saw him again fill out from a squat, twisted-featured solider into a sweet-faced poet. She pushed her half-eaten boar aside and focused on this strange Icelander as he began his tale.
‘We topped the Kjolen Mountains at dawn,’ Halldor started, ‘King Olaf at our head, his landwaster banner flying high above him bearing his own golden dragon, roaring defiance. He rode to the ridge and looked down across the great valley and he threw his arms wide. “See that,” he called back to us, his men, “see those pines, stood proud to the skies and those rivers crashing towards the sea and that lake, catching the clouds in its stillness – that is all of Norway before us now. It is glorious and it is ours to reclaim.” And we came forward then and joined him on the ridge and before us was, indeed, Norway, and behind us four thousand troops, primed and ready to fight for their rightful king.
‘“We shall reclaim it,” we called into the sharp morning air and our voices seemed to echo all the way down the valley as if already making the first charge against the usurper. Oh, we were strong in heart and we were strong in arm and we were strong in right – for Olaf was the true king of ancient Yngling blood – but we were not, alas, strong in numbers. For the enemy, the usurper, when we joined with him in the great plain at Stikelstad some hours later had summoned some ten thousand of the devil’s own soldiers to his back and we knew when we saw them that it would be a hard fight – yet we would not back down.
‘The sun had tipped over noon by the time the horns sounded and we made the first charge and, though we were few, we splintered them apart time and again. We drove spears deep into the hearts of the men in the front line, forcing them into those behind so that they quailed back and it seemed the victory would be ours and Norway would be returned to King Olaf. But then . . .’
Halldor paused and Elizaveta felt the whole hall draw in its breath.
‘Witchcraft,’ he whispered into the silence.
There were gasps, a couple of small shrieks, swiftly muffled. Some of Halldor’s Old Norse words were lost on the crowd but there was no missing the tone and Elizaveta could not take her eyes off him as he raised his hands.
‘Cnut sent a devil with a black cloak across the sun. We saw the shadow cross the blessed disc, drawing false night across the battlefield finger-space by finger-space until it consumed us and we, who did not know the ground so well as they, were lost.’ Halldor’s voice dipped. ‘It was a rout, my lords and ladies – a treacherous, devious rout, for they sent their extra numbers round the back of us under cover of their hellish shade and we, poor innocents, had no place to go, save to carve our way out – and that we did, but in the darkness it was every man for himself and battles cannot be won that way. We tried to save our dear king but they followed the gold of his dragon banner to his last stand, slashed it to shreds and then cut him out of our arms.’
Halldor pushed back a wide sleeve to show a livid wound almost from wrist to elbow. The hall gasped again.
‘Three of them there were,’ he went on, his voice more forceful now, ‘great lords all by the richness of their armour, though I knew them not in the evil mist. One struck him in the thigh.’ Halldor thrust forward suddenly, right to the edge of the dais and those nearest flinched back. He prowled along the edge then suddenly jabbed his arm upwards. ‘One thrust a spear beneath his mail coat and the last . . .’ Now he grabbed young Vladimir, sat at the end of the high table, and made a dramatic gesture across his throat ‘ . . . cut his sainted neck.’
Vladimir obligingly sank onto his bench as if slain. There was a faint titter but all eyes were still on Halldor as he strode back to the centre of the dais.
‘He was gone,’ Halldor told the hall, his voice now echoing round the high, painted walls and into the over-reaching arches of the wooden parapets and roof above. ‘King Olaf was gone and our cause with it and we had no choice but to flee to preserve our bodies and souls for vengeance.’
His voice rose on the final word, a thunder-clap of sound, and the released Kievan crowd roared their approval. Yaroslav rose, clapping, and everyone joined him until it seemed the very heroes in the frescoes were applauding too.
‘You shall be a count, Halldor,’ Yaroslav announced. ‘I shall confirm it in court tomorrow.’
Elizaveta saw Halldor flush, the colour creeping visibly into his pock-marked cheeks and shooting up his squashed nose and out across his pate, and as it did so he hunched in on himself again and, with a modest wave, collapsed back onto his bench.
‘And all that is true, Princess,’ he said to Elizaveta, ‘as God is my witness.’
Elizaveta could see now why no man had wished to talk of the evil day.
‘Cnut called down the night?’ she whispered.
‘I saw it with my own eyes, though I know not how.’
‘And that is why,’ Harald put in, his own fair face sober at the memory of the dark battle, ‘we will need a very great force to take Norway back out of his thieving hands.’
Elizaveta nodded slowly.
‘You will do it, I know. You will take Norway back.’
‘I will, and rob him of Denmark and England too.’
‘England?’
‘Why not? ’Tis but a day or two’s sail from our western shores.’
Elizaveta looked at him, stunned by the glorious ambition shining from his fierce eyes.
‘’Tis a high aim, Harald.’
‘Then I will need the very best arrows. You will keep my gold, Elizaveta?’
His voice had stilled, grown solemn. She looked into his grey eyes and saw swirls of dark blue and gold within their steady colour, as if sunlit rivers were flowing through them, keen to reach their destination.
‘With all my heart,’ she agreed.
CHAPTER THREE
Kiev, October 1031
‘News of the Varangians!’
Vladimir came running into the boathouse where Elizaveta was sitting watching Jakob, the master boatbuilder, lovingly fit the first side strakes to the curved keel of Yaroslav’s new trading vessel. It was a wide ship made for transporting furs, wax and weapons south down the Dnieper to Byzantium and not as sleek as a wave-slicing warship, but it was beautiful all t
he same. Elizaveta had been happily absorbed in Jakob’s work for some time but now she leaped up and ran to her brother.
‘What news?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You said there was news, Vlad.’
Elizaveta grabbed his arm impatiently. Yaroslav had given Prince Harald and his men a commission in his guard and despatched them to the north to help quell a rebellion on the coast. They had been gone all summer and Elizaveta was desperate for news of them.
‘There is,’ her brother agreed, maddeningly calm. ‘I just don’t know what. Three riders came in the gates an hour or so back.’
‘An hour? Why did you not find me sooner?’
‘Because, sister, you are very hard to find. I’ve been all over the bowers.’
Elizaveta grimaced.
‘It is too sunny for the bowers, especially with winter on its way, but no matter – how do you know the men have come from the Varangians?’
‘Because one of them is him . . .’
‘Prince Harald?’
‘No, not him. The other one – Ulf, is it?’
‘Ulf Ospakkson, yes. Are you sure?’
‘Course I’m sure. I’ve never seen a wilder mop of hair on a man. Will you come up to the palace, Lily?’
‘I certainly will.’ She ran over to the old boatbuilder and planted a kiss on his weathered cheek. ‘Thank you, Jakob.’
‘Pleasure, Princess, as always. Perhaps I will craft you a ship one day?’
‘Oh I do hope so – a sleek, curved one with fine carvings and an eagle’s head at the prow.’
‘An eagle?’ Jakob raised a shaggy eyebrow. ‘Very well then, I shall start practising my birds.’
‘Do.’
Elizaveta beamed at him then took Vladimir’s arm and headed outside. The boathouse was at the water’s edge in the trading district of Kiev known as the Podol, or Valley, as it stood far below the royal kremlin up on the great plateau. The wooden walkways here were raised to escape the spring flooding and the houses, workshops and stores were similarly lifted on strengthened cross-beam foundations.
The Constant Queen Page 3