‘He is with Harald.’
‘Aksel will be disappointed.’
Elizaveta looked around for the child, now five years old and ever in scrapes, and was grateful to see him playing tag around the columns with Yuri and Boris. Aksel was always asking about his colourful father and would be sad not to see him. She did her best to tell him tales of Halldor’s grand warrior life but she had not his skill and although the boy was devoted to her and had touchingly proclaimed himself her squire on his fifth birthday, she often caught him looking longingly over the city’s south wall. But then, she was often doing the same herself.
‘I am sorry,’ Ulf said. ‘Halldor longed to come too but we did not wish to leave Harald unprotected.’
Elizaveta raised an eyebrow.
‘You two are the only men in Harald’s troop of renowned soldiers who can keep him safe?’
Ulf did not even hesitate.
‘Yes, we are. Please accept the gift, Princess. I have travelled many days to bring it here.’
‘I did not ask that of you.’
‘You did not,’ Ulf acknowledged, ‘but all the same I ask this of you.’
He held the package out again and reluctantly she took it. The myriad guests were flocking out of the Hagia Sophia and only sharp-eyed Agatha, her arm on Edward’s like a true princess, noticed them behind the half-built pillars. Slowly Elizaveta undid the ribbon and looked at the now familiar keys, two this time. Between them, though, was an object tied up in an exotically embroidered bag. Her curiosity piqued, Elizaveta handed the keys carefully to Ulf and opened the tiny bag. Turning it over she let its contents tip into the palm of her hand and looked down, stunned.
It was a finger ring, melded of gold and inlaid with a tiny, intricate mosaic of ruby, sapphire and emerald. Written around it in runes was the conceit: ‘Mine is Yours is . . .’ Round and round forever, eternally binding.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she breathed.
‘Harald had it made especially in Miklegard.’
Miklegard! The word, once so magical, grated against Elizaveta’s heart. Always it was about Miklegard. Miklegard was even, thanks to her father’s building work, come to Kiev – but Harald was not. No plans, however grand, seemed worth his absence.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she repeated, ‘but empty.’
Elizaveta held it up and regarded Ulf through the hole at the centre.
‘But Princess, that is for . . .’
‘I know what it is for, Ulf, but tell your precious master this – I will never wear this ring upon my finger until he is come to place it there himself. Take it.’
She shoved it at him but he put up a hand in protest and it caught her own, sending the priceless ring pinging across the darker reaches of Yaroslav’s freshly cut marble flooring. Elizaveta bit her lip but stood her ground as Ulf scrabbled for – and thankfully found – the ring up against a pillar.
‘Princess,’ he protested, his eyes as hurt as if she had spurned him and not his far-off master, ‘Harald does you great honour with this ring.’
‘Harald,’ she corrected him, her heart aching, ‘will do me honour when he stands at the altar with me, as Prince Andrew has stood with my sister today. I will keep his treasure safe, as I have sworn to do, but until he leaves his southern seas and comes north himself he has no claim on me.’ Ulf’s eyes hardened. She hated to see it but she could do nothing else. ‘I love him, Ulf,’ she said simply and then spun away and buried herself in the crowd, fumbling for her linen square as hot tears fell.
She had started this journey as Harald’s treasure-keeper and it seemed she was that again – no more, no less. It had been a long, hard way to come for so little.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Miklegard, April 1042
Harald kicked at the wall. A tiny scrap of mortar flaked off but these walls, he knew, were almost as thick as a man lying on his side. He could kick all century without getting through and he might have to.
‘We stayed too long,’ he growled, pacing the tiny cell for the hundredth time that morning.
It was hot and the stench of his own piss assailed his nostrils from the rough bucket in the corner. It was foul. He’d not had a bath since he’d been thrown in here and the crust of sweat and dirt was itching at his skin. The guards had even taken his comb. He’d been momentarily pleased that they considered him so dangerous they could not even leave him with those tiny ivory teeth but three weeks in, with his hair birds-nesting, he was no longer amused. It wasn’t that he was vain but his hair was his mark; his men looked for it in battle. How could he expect them to follow this mop?
‘We should not have returned here from Sicily,’ he raged. ‘We should have taken passage north with those Normans.’
‘The ones heading back to try and assassinate their own duke?’ Ulf said scornfully.
Harald laughed bitterly.
‘It does seem to be their favourite sport. Young William must be enchanted to have avoided so many swords – but ’tis not his fate that need concern us now. We should have fled to Kiev whilst we had the chance.’
‘The emperor had just died,’ Ulf grunted and Harald looked round. His friend was sat in a corner whittling at a stick with a nail he’d found on the floor just beyond the bars. Surely guards who took combs from their prisoners should watch for such things? ‘We needed to be here, remember, to . . . what was it, Halldor?’
‘Hammer whilst the blade is hot,’ Halldor supplied gloomily.
The older man was sat in the opposite corner, staring into space. He’d done a lot of that recently and Harald sometimes wondered what he saw. Whatever it was, it had to be better than this.
It had all been going so well. With the poor young Emperor Michael fading into a cripple before everyone’s eyes, Miklegard – or Constantinople as they were learning to call it – had become a viper’s nest of factions and plots. Empress Zoe, the direct ruler in the imperial line, would remain in place but there must be an emperor too. The dead Michael’s nephew had been named as Michael V but he was weak and unpopular and there were plenty keen to challenge his frail rule.
The empire was, as Harald had reported hopefully to Yaroslav last year, ready to crack wide open and Yaroslav had been preparing a fleet to do just that. Harald had seen the ships safe in Vitichev, away from the prying eyes of the Kievan gossips. He had inspected them with the Grand Prince last Yule, discussing where Miklegard was weakest and what it would take to steal her but now things had gone wrong. Young Michael, perhaps sensing trouble, had sent his generals to throw Harald and his men into this rat-hole where they could aid no one against him, least of all themselves.
Harald rattled at the great bars of his cell in frustration. It was he who should be holding the power, he and Yaroslav together, but the imperial faction had moved too fast for them. If he were not stuck celebrating Christ’s resurrection in a five paces square hole in the depths of the old palace they would have been there, in Vitichev, preparing to attack. Yaroslav would be emperor, they had agreed as much, but Harald would have first right of succession and would rule as the sub-Imperatrix in the golden city itself, Elizaveta with him. They would ride under her beautiful raven banner, currently tied uselessly around his waist like a Greek fashion trifle. She would like that, he’d been sure. She would agree, once she came here, that Constantinople was a worthy place to rule and she would forget Norway as he had forgotten Norway. Or nearly forgotten.
Letting go of the bars, Harald turned back into the cell, his long legs physically itching at their confines. His hand went to his pocket in which he kept the missives that had arrived all too often from Finn Arnasson. He’d half-hoped the guards would take them with his comb but they had just laughed at the strange lettering and stuffed them back in the leather pouch at his belt, cracking the birch but not the messages it held. They’d been wiser than they knew, for those letters more than anything else, save perhaps this damned imprisonment, were shaking his resolve to bid for the Byzantine Empire.
Harald leaned against the wall, grateful for the cool of the stones through his sticky tunic, and pictured him – Finn Arnasson, the man who had brought him up from the age of twelve; the man who had taught him the art of war and of courtship; the man who had taught him how to be a man. His own father, Sigurd, God bless him, had been a gentle soul, happiest, despite his royal lineage, with his sheep and Harald had been nearly as restless on their Ringerike farm as he was now in this hell-hole of a cell. His mother, Asta, had luckily been made of more ambitious metal and had secured him his place with the Arnassons. With Finn.
Harald stared into the empty air, much as Halldor did, and for once saw images of his own. Finn had brought him to life. His raucous, wild household had been heaven after years of sheepshearing and Harald had thrown himself into his martial training with fervour. From Finn and his top warriors he had learned skill, poise and cunning, and from Finn also he had learned the joy of the battlefield. Sigurd had liked to talk of peace and Finn, too, embraced it as an ideal but it was when he spoke of war that Harald’s foster father’s eyes lit up. For Harald that had been the greatest release of all. He’d been born to battle, he knew it, but it was Finn who’d shown him how to embrace that desire and how to use it. He owed him much.
His fingers rasped across the letters, written not on birch twigs but on the bark – a flatter, wider surface where words could be not just commands but expressions of feeling. Finn had told him of Einar’s increasing power and of Kalv’s banishment. Harald had felt a momentary flicker of pleasure that the slyest Arnasson was gone, for Kalv had ever worked to get him into trouble as a youth, but he had soon seen past that. Magnus was a fool. If Kalv had dealt Olaf his death-blow it was a hurt, certainly, but one that he could have used to bind the man to him, not to cast him out where he could plot and scheme. Besides, much as Harald disliked Kalv he could see that he had only been obeying orders and if you started punishing that you had nowhere left to go. Magnus was not a soldier, that was the problem. He ruled with his pampered exile’s heart; no wonder Einar was in charge.
If you have any ambition for Norway, Finn had written to him, you should come now. Einar grows dangerous and, unchecked, will have Norway on her knees. We look eagerly for you, son. We would welcome you. Tora, especially, would welcome you as I know she has welcomed you before.
Harald pulled his fingers from the pocket as if it might suddenly bite him. Tora! He owed her much too. He had heard tell she was married and had felt the news as a release, but now it seemed she was widowed and her tenacious uncle was harking back to their supposed childhood alliance. He thought of his erstwhile sweetheart. If he strained, he could still see her standing in the doorway of his pavilion; could still see her voluptuous body unveiled from the thick cloak; could still feel himself harden at his first sight of female beauty.
He could see too now, too many years later, how she had held herself – guarded, fragile. He had not noticed it then, had seen only her ripe breasts and the inviting tuck in her pubic hair. He did not blame himself – he’d been fifteen and about to ride to his first battle so he had not so much questioned why she was there as revelled in the joy of it. Now, though, the questions ran round and round in his head.
‘We are betrothed,’ she’d said to him. That, too, he had barely regarded, his mind focused on more immediate needs, but it haunted him now, in this cell full of memories and too much time to think. He’d hoped that with her marriage she had forgotten him, moved on, as he had moved on. He would not be a good husband to Tora Arnasson. If his wanderings drove Elizaveta wild, they would kill the quiet Norwegian woman.
His fingers went instinctively to the ring Elizaveta had sent back. He’d been furious when Ulf had returned it with her message. He had railed against her arrogance and denounced her pride and vowed he would forget her and her damned father besides and sail for Norway on the morrow. He’d stormed through the war camp outside Syracuse, tearing strips off his men and setting extra training for all and working himself into a lather with swordplay until Halldor had calmly taken him aside and suggested he ‘look at it from her point of view’.
Harald had thought him mad. He had little truck with other people’s points of view. They were rarely as clear or as focused as his own and would only weaken him as a leader. This time, though, with Halldor fixing him in his funny, wizened stare and his men panting behind, he’d tried. Or, at least, he’d listened as Halldor elaborated it for him in his usual fancy way.
He’d seen how frustrating it must be for Elizaveta, shut up in Kiev never knowing when he would come for her and now, imprisoned in this damned cell, he understood it better than ever. It was not, though, Halldor’s persuasive stories that had made him string the ring on a leather cord around his neck but just the very thought of her. He did not need to understand Elizaveta to want her. She nagged at his soul. She would make a terrible wife – Yaroslav had said as much at their betrothal – for she would be all rebellion and demands, but so was life.
‘You’re right,’ he said out loud. ‘It was my fault. I chose to stay and I was wrong.’
Ulf rose.
‘It’s good to hear you say so for once, Hari, but truly you were not to know that one of the plots was against us.’
‘But I should have done, Ulf. I have a soldier’s daring, not a politician’s cunning, and now look where we are. We have to get out.’
‘So you keep saying, but how?’
Harald kicked the wall again. This time it did not even yield a flake of stone, just sat there solid and uncaring. And now his toe hurt.
‘Bribe the guards?’ he tried.
‘With what?’ Ulf asked. ‘Sexual favours?’
Harald shuddered.
‘Promises,’ he suggested. ‘Halldor can do it; he’s the wordsmith. You could spin them a tale, Hal, surely – tell them what riches and honour will be bestowed upon them if they aid us to overcome the evil emperor?’
He looked to Halldor but his friend was up and pressed against the bars, straining forward.
‘Looks like he’s going to try biting his way out,’ Ulf laughed but Halldor put up a hand.
‘Hush a minute, you two – listen.’
‘What is it, Hal?’
‘Listen!’
Harald and Ulf moved up to stand at his side. Harald closed his eyes on the murky cell and the murkier corridor beyond and did as he was asked. Halldor was right – there were noises and not just the usual heckles of market, but shouting, cursing. And now he heard bells ringing out, clattering a wanton tune as if their ropes were pulled in haste – or desperation.
‘Riot?’
‘I think so,’ Halldor agreed. ‘It’s been coming.’
Harald and Ulf turned on him.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because, unlike you two, I only speak when there’s something worth saying. The rest of the time I listen. The guards talk.’
‘In Greek.’
‘Which I have learned.’
‘Really?’ Harald looked at his old friend, impressed. Most of the nations they met with – Swedish, Danish, Rus, Norman, even English – spoke a form of Norse, developed differently but still recognisable as the same tongue. The Greeks, though, were different and their words sounded to Harald like the cackle of hens. ‘When did you learn Greek, Hal?’
‘Just picked it up. I like words.’
‘As do I,’ Harald objected.
‘And I like meanings. They say that the new emperor has overreached himself. They say he plots against the great Empress Zoe herself.’
‘Against the empress?’ Harald asked, impressed again at Halldor’s understanding. ‘The people will not like that.’
‘No indeed.’
Halldor’s gaze flicked out of the bars again and now they could all hear the unmistakable chant of ‘Zoe, Zoe, Zoe!’ growing louder every minute. Whatever force was on the march out there, it was coming their way.
‘Shout!’ Halldor urged. ‘Make those useless lungs of yours count for once
.’
Ulf and Harald needed no second asking and the three men clung to their prison bars and yelled. No guards came and, encouraged, they yelled louder. Harald felt as if his chest might burst but there was no way he was being left to rot in this locked casket of a room. He would ten times rather crawl from a battlefield with a sword in his chest and his own blood pumping a path for him than waste ignominiously away unnoticed, especially if there was a riot to be had.
‘Here!’ Harald called. ‘In here. Help!’
It probably sounded foolish but so what? He could hear the guards down the corridor now, panicking, begging for mercy in sharp, high-pitched cries that were cut off with a gurgle as someone’s knife slit blood across their dying vocal cords.
‘Pray whoever it is likes us,’ Ulf muttered and then suddenly the corridor was filled with the rebels and, to the three men’s huge astonishment, the foremost amongst them were women.
‘Your harem, Harald?’ Ulf asked drily.
‘If only,’ Harald threw back but now Halldor was talking to the women as one of them fumbled a big key into the lock.
‘Sweet nothings, Halldor?’ Ulf teased.
Halldor glared at him.
‘I asked them why they’re fighting,’ he said.
‘And?’
‘They say everyone is fighting. The emperor has had Empress Zoe shorn and sent to a nunnery. It is too much, they say. Zoe has ruled Constantinople as consort for fourteen years; she cannot be cast aside. They say it is the duty of every woman in the Byzantine Empire to rise for her.’
Harald blinked but now the doors were wide and he cared not who had opened them. This was no time for debate but for action. He dived out into the golden city to find the mob ruling the streets. They surged between the houses, pushing down fences, cracking pavements and setting upon any official foolish enough to get in their way as they drove towards the vast imperial palace at the heart of the city like a wrecking tide. There was nothing golden about Miklegard tonight.
As Harald joined the throng he pictured the city as he had first seen it, rising up from the aquamarine of the Bosporus in a wondrous jumble of towers, spires and cupolas like a vast playground for the old gods. He remembered his awe at the open harbour, row upon row of jetties and every one clean and ordered and policed by officials in dazzling white tunics emblazoned with the imperial crest. He remembered the streets, wide enough for two wagons to pass and paved in stone ground smooth so no wheel caught.
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