The Constant Queen

by Joanna Courtney

  Harald rose, one foot at a time. He looked stiff suddenly, almost old.

  ‘Your Highness, we must talk about this.’

  ‘Talk?’

  Yaroslav’s eyes narrowed and the delicious thrills around Elizaveta’s body were instantly chased out by a shiver of cold dread. The mood had changed. Everyone knew it. Even the youngsters at the back of the hall had stilled and the sudden silence was suffocating.

  ‘The situation in Miklegard is not as we thought,’ Harald said. ‘Not as it was.’

  Yaroslav advanced on him and though he was two heads shorter than the Varangian he seemed to tower over him.

  ‘Not as we thought?’

  ‘Not as we hoped.’

  ‘We hoped, Harald? You said Miklegard was cracking. You said she was weak. You said we could take her.’

  ‘And it seemed true,’ Harald protested. ‘Nay, I thought it was true. We all did.’

  He looked desperately to Halldor and Ulf who rose now and came to their leader’s side, his supporters, his protectors. They were no use, though, against Yaroslav’s rising anger.

  ‘And what then, pray, is the situation in Miklegard?’

  ‘Unsettled,’ Harald managed. ‘The emperor is dead and there is not yet a new one.’

  ‘Then,’ Yaroslav snapped, his voice a whip-crack, ‘we must move now. Your wedding can wait.’

  ‘No!’ Elizaveta cried and then smothered it in a napkin.

  This mission was so important to Yaroslav. More than that, it was driving him and had been for months. He had taken Elizaveta to see the fleet, a magnificent group of ships that must have cost half his silver to build. He had called Vladimir back from Novgorod and spent hours with the boy – now a man and as eager for the glory of this bold plan as his father – plotting their every move. He had even employed the greatest minds in all Rus and beyond to find a coating for the ships that would repel the legendary Greek fire. The project had consumed him and he would not let it go. Should not let it go. She looked angrily at Harald. Why was he so scared? He had escaped Miklegard a fugitive, so surely he must seize the chance to return a victor?

  ‘It is not just the emperor, though, Sire,’ Harald was protesting. ‘There is the empress too.’

  ‘The empress!’ Yaroslav scoffed. ‘You are afeared for your manhood, Harald?’

  The druzhina laughed but it was a terse, nervous sound.

  ‘Your Highness,’ Elizaveta heard Harald urge, his voice low, ‘please can we discuss this in private. It is complicated. I would not wish you to send your beautiful ships into destruction.’

  Yaroslav’s eyes narrowed further, like slits in a full-face helmet.

  ‘You doubt my fleet?’

  ‘No, Grand Prince. No, I . . .’

  ‘You doubt my son, perhaps?’

  He gestured to Vladimir who came forward, flanking his father as Ulf and Halldor flanked Harald.

  ‘I doubt him not,’ Harald insisted.

  The Rus nobility were edging forward, eager to hear, and Elizaveta saw Ulf and Halldor square their shoulders and glance to their company, as if readying to fight. No swords were allowed in the great hall but these men of Harald’s, these strange, wild, fiercely loyal men, had hands as deadly as blades wielded by others. Were they threatening her father? How dare they?

  Elizaveta rose too. Her mother waved her frantically down but she was a part of this and she would not stand back and let her future husband, her oh-so-glorious hero of a future husband, destroy all of Yaroslav’s plans.

  ‘Harald,’ she said and all eyes swung her way. ‘Explain yourself. You say Miklegard is weak, leaderless, so why . . .’

  ‘Not leaderless,’ Harald broke in. She bristled and he made a visible effort to check his tone. ‘They have the empress.’

  ‘But she is a woman and an old one besides – and mad, too, or so they say.’

  ‘Perhaps, but she was born in the purple.’

  ‘This all turns on the colour of the empress’s bedhangings?’

  ‘Yes!’ Harald’s voice broke across the listeners, sharp as a slap, and Elizaveta flinched back. ‘Yes,’ he repeated, more quietly but her anger was rising now.

  ‘You do not wish to attack?’ she asked icily.

  ‘I don’t consider it wise to attack, no. The people of Miklegard . . .’

  ‘The people?’ Elizaveta spluttered. ‘So now we are to cut our plans to account for the common will?

  ‘Miklegard is a vast, cosmopolitan city, Lily.’

  ‘And Kiev is not?’

  ‘Miklegard is different. You would not understand, you . . .’

  But Elizaveta had heard enough. Years she had waited for this man. Years she had dreamed of him and planned for him and yearned for him. Years she had believed in him but it turned out that he was not the man she’d thought.

  ‘Oh I understand, Harald,’ she said. ‘I understand very well. You are but a storyteller’s hero, all transitory adventure and tiny, petty, personal triumphs. You sail alone. You and your precious pair of bodyguards and your ship full of bachelor soldiers. This country, my father’s country, has sheltered you and nurtured you and kept your precious treasure – I have kept your precious treasure – but when we ask you for just a little in return, you refuse us.’

  ‘Elizaveta, that’s not true. I seek only to protect Kiev.’

  ‘No, Harald – you seek only to protect yourself. Here.’

  She unclipped the great neck chain that she had taken from its casket before dinner with such pride. It was thick with keys and charms now, worth more than most men, nay, than most lords, would see in their lifetime and she had felt honoured to wear it. Now, though, she despised it.

  ‘Take it!’ She thrust it into his hand. ‘Take it and take your precious men and go. Go north to Novgorod and release your damned treasure and return to Norway where you belong – where you have always belonged.’

  She felt the weight of the druzhina’s eager stares and knew the bowers would be a-buzz with this tomorrow. She caught sight of Anne, frozen in horror at the argument, and Agatha’s kind eyes swimming with sympathy, but looked away before she could catch Anastasia’s inevitable triumph. Even that, though, felt right; she had been seduced by Harald as surely as Yaroslav had and she must pay.

  ‘We will attack Miklegard without you,’ she told him.

  ‘No! No, please.’ Harald looked to Yaroslav. ‘The golden city is as closed off in its mind as it is by its walls. No one will welcome you, not the fleet, not the empress and not a single man, woman or child. You would have to kill them all.’

  ‘Then,’ Yaroslav said, stepping over to Elizaveta and putting an arm around her shoulders, the solid weight of it making her realise how she was quivering, ‘maybe that is what we will do. It is no concern of yours now, Harald. As my daughter says, you should leave.’

  Harald looked from one to the other. He turned and let his eyes roam the vast room. Ulf and Halldor pressed close to his side and suddenly Elizaveta hated them. They would take him away from her. Already her anger was cooling, leaving her clammy and nauseous.

  ‘I love him,’ she’d told Ulf. Had they laughed at that? Had they gloried in another of his conquests?

  Slowly Harald nodded.

  ‘If that is your wish, Grand Prince, though I sorrow in it. I shall go to Norway and if I am such an empty hero to you, Elizaveta, I shall find a wife elsewhere. Good night and good luck.’

  And with that he swept a clipped bow to Yaroslav and leaped from the dais, Ulf and Halldor swift at his heels and Aksel only a heartbeat behind them. Briefly the boy glanced back at Elizaveta, sorrow in his young eyes, but at the clack of the soldiers’ boots across the marble floor, he turned and was gone.

  The hall sat, frozen, as outside the Varangians called for their horses. They all listened as the gates cranked open, their chains creaking as Halldor’s had done in his story barely a candle’s mark past and then, in a riot of hooves and shouts, they were gone. Harald was gone and Elizaveta was alone.


  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Novgorod, January 1043

  ‘More ale!’

  ‘More? Any more, Harald, and you’ll drown.’

  ‘More ale! Aksel!’

  Harald waved his tankard at the boy who rushed forward with an apologetic look at his father.

  ‘Let him,’ Halldor sighed. ‘Perhaps a sore head will bring him to his senses.’

  ‘Who needs senses?’ Harald drawled. ‘Who needs feelings?’

  ‘Ah!’ Ulf clapped his leader on the back. ‘Now we get to the heart of it.’

  ‘Don’t talk of hearts.’ Harald sensed as much as saw his old friends rolling their eyes over his head. ‘And don’t laugh at me.’

  ‘We’re not laughing, my lord. We are simply wondering how much more of your hard-won treasure you intend to pour into a tankard and out of your own foul bowels before we can set sail. We have a fleet. We have men.’

  ‘It’s winter.’

  ‘Not the best time to sail, I grant you, but the Varangian Sea never freezes and at least this way we might surprise them. If we sail now we can be in Norway within a week and paying good King Magnus a nice surprise visit in his winter residence. If the messengers are to be believed, King Harthacnut is dead. England has passed to Edward, Ethelred’s son, but Denmark has gone to Magnus. That’s another kingdom handed to him on a plate and it’s not right. Let him cede Norway to you and go and relax in the fertile Danish lowlands. You said yourself that Finn Arnasson has paved the way for a peaceful entry and the men are ready just in case he is proved wrong. There is no farming to be done, and no trading either. ’Tis the perfect time to sail.’

  ‘It’s not right.’

  ‘What?’

  Harald looked up.

  ‘I said it’s not right.’

  ‘Sailing to Norway?’

  ‘No! I mean, yes – that’s right. What’s not right is sailing alone.’

  ‘You are not alone, Harald. We have five hundred men. We have . . .’

  Halldor clamped a hand over Ulf’s mouth.

  ‘Go and check on them, Ulf.’

  Ulf looked startled.

  ‘Check on the men? Why?’

  ‘Because if they are as ready as you say – and I believe they are – they will be restless, troublesome. See they are not bothering the good citizens of Novgorod, will you? And take Aksel – it’s time he had his first street brawl.’

  Ulf sighed but rose.

  ‘Fine, fine. We’ll leave you two to cosy up. Come on Aksel, lad, let’s go and crash some skulls together.’

  Aksel leaped up eagerly and followed Ulf from the tavern. Halldor settled himself on the bench at Harald’s side.

  ‘It’s her, isn’t it – Elizaveta?’

  Harald drank. He didn’t talk about women; no man did – or should. All autumn he had busied himself with trading treasure, commissioning boats, mustering men. All autumn he’d turned his blonde head determinedly north but the first snows had crept under his skin and suddenly it all felt wrong.

  He’d read Finn’s letters again and again and even written to say he was sailing in the New Year. Finn had assured him that Magnus was ready to ‘welcome his dear uncle’ and though he doubted that was true, he had also sent letters to Ingrid’s brother, King Anund of Sweden, to be sure of safe housing there until the way was clear into his homelands. Ulf was right – Magnus had Denmark now and he was sure the boy would eventually make at least a pretence at settlement and he could move forward from there.

  He’d lain awake trying desperately to picture Tora naked beneath her cloak but every single time an image of Elizaveta spitting fury at him in front of all Kiev had intruded and proved many times more erotic. Elizaveta wouldn’t be just a wife but a partner and he’d wondered time and again how he’d let some stupid, ill-thought-out public argument rob him of all that. He drank again.

  Halldor drank too but then he said: ‘When Elsa died I wanted to take my dagger and plunge it into my own heart.’

  Harald looked at him, shocked.

  ‘But that’s . . .’

  ‘A sin?’

  ‘Not that so much as . . .’

  ‘Cowardly? Inglorious? I know. I hated myself for it but I hated the world without her in it more. And I might have done it too if it hadn’t been for Aksel.’

  Harald rubbed at his eyes as if he might be dreaming.

  ‘Truly, Hal?’

  ‘Pathetic?’

  ‘Pathetic.’

  Both men drank again. Neither spoke until eventually Halldor added: ‘I still think of her, Harald. Every single day I think of her and it may be pathetic but I can’t help it and in a funny way it keeps me going. I think, maybe, some women are just special. Elsa was one and it seems to me that Elizaveta is another.’

  Harald rounded on him.

  ‘I have a betrothed in Norway.’

  ‘I know. You are a greedy man, Harald Sigurdsson, but I do not see you setting the sails to get to her. Instead we’re all kicking our frozen heels in Novgorod waiting for you to get up the balls to go back to Kiev and apologise.’

  ‘You think that’s why we wait?’

  ‘Do you not?’

  ‘No! There’s the ice and the troops and the . . .’ Even drunk Harald heard how useless his excuses sounded – how pathetic. ‘She won’t have me,’ he bit out instead.

  ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘She hates me.’

  ‘It’s a good sign.’

  ‘This isn’t a story, Hal.’

  ‘Of course it is. It’s your story, Harald, so you should write it the way you want it. Her father’s fleet sailed for Miklegard and it was a disaster. They limped home just as you said they would and the young Prince Vladimir barely escaped with his life. Elizaveta will know now that you are not a coward, but a wise general.’

  ‘Wise? Come now, Halldor.’

  ‘You’re right. I get carried away with words. Moderately sensible – is that an improvement?’

  Harald clapped his friend on the back.

  ‘I think maybe, Hal, you are the wise one. You think she might have me still?’

  ‘I think it’s worth a chance and, besides, if she does not, you have your spare in Norway.’

  Harald pulled a face at his crinkled friend and drank again, trying desperately to disguise the smile creeping across his face. Could he ride?

  ‘You crossed the chain at Miklegard,’ Halldor’s voice whispered into his ear. ‘You fried pirates on the Greek sea. You braved the empress in her lair and came out alive. Surely you can ask a girl to forgive you?’

  Surely he could, Harald thought, but it seemed far harder than anything he’d done before.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Podol, Kiev, January 1043

  Elizaveta felt the rush of heat across her face as, with an animal roar, the men of Kiev flung their torches into the great galley ship set on the thick ice of the Dnieper and it flared proudly. The flames balled briefly in the very centre of the old vessel before licking out along the rowing benches and dancing along the gunwales towards the great dragon head high up on the prow. The crowd in the crazy streets of the Podol cheered madly and Elizaveta, stood in the royal grandstand with Anne and Agatha, felt as warmed by their joy as by the heat.

  ‘This bit makes me sad,’ a voice said behind her.

  She turned to Jakob, the master boatbuilder who was honoured as part of the royal party at this special fire festival, and smiled.

  ‘The ship was old, Jakob.’

  ‘But beautiful.’

  ‘They all are, and you will build more.’

  Jakob sighed a harsh, rasping sigh.

  ‘I built many last year, Princess, just to send them to the bottom of the Greek sea with your brother, God bless him.’

  ‘Vladimir did not sink, Jakob,’ Elizaveta said sternly, looking for her father who, thankfully, was absorbed in the fire as the ice cracked beneath the ship and it shifted, keen to be off on its final journey.

  Her pagan ancestors, not
so many years back, had believed they were sending it to Valhalla to win favour for the year’s trading and raiding ahead and she was sure many of the wide-eyed watchers in the Podol still clung to that belief. Many young men were making dangerous runs across the melting ice to fling gifts – rings, horseshoes, gowns, drinking cups, all the symbols of their individual trades – into the flames. They did it more to impress the young women of Kiev than any lingering gods, but the superstitions were still strong beneath the whole ceremony. It was the sort of night, were they in the northern lands of their forefathers, when the trolls would be roaming free.

  Elizaveta shivered, despite the heat of the blaze. Would Harald be celebrating the winter fire festival in Norway? Would he be watching his own galley burn, no longer needed now he was secure at home, with King Magnus on one side and his blonde Norwegian wife on the other?

  ‘Don’t think of it,’ she told herself, as she had done all winter.

  Her family had been very kind in the wake of Harald’s dramatic departure. Agatha and Edward had taken her out riding, driving the horses hard to force her mind off her troubles. Anne had brought her a book of prayers, beautifully inscribed ‘for my courageous sister’ in her own golden lettering, and even Anastasia had seemed genuinely concerned, though perhaps it was just jealousy at her dramatically tragic status.

  Ingrid had secured the services of a talented viol player from Bavaria to help her develop her music and it had been a blessed distraction. Yaroslav had bought her jewels and taken her on a tour of the ever-growing Snake Ramparts and then, at Christ’s mass, invited a dozen eligible young counts and princes from neighbouring tribute-lands to pay her court. It had not gone well. Elizaveta had tried her best to be polite but, truly, they had all been simpering idiots compared to . . .

  ‘Don’t think of it,’ she told herself again.

  Vladimir, home from the terrible expedition to Miklegard, had returned to Novgorod where he had married the daughter of the previous count. Ivan was betrothed to a princess of Miklegard, as part of the prolonged peace negotiations following their defeat, and Yaroslav had finally given in to Agatha’s determined entreaties and offered her to Edward. The earnest prince, now into his thirties, had been delighted but embarrassed, repeating what he had oft told Elizaveta – that he had little chance of ever paying his exuberant benefactor back. Agatha, however, had pronounced firmly that her happiness was all the thanks Yaroslav needed and the wedding was set for next year when she turned fifteen.