The Constant Queen

by Joanna Courtney

  ‘It cannot,’ she shouted, her words being sucked up into another giant wave as all around the men fought to turn the spinning craft head-on to avoid destruction. ‘I cannot lose another.’

  She looked for Harald but he was at the steer-board with Ulf, his muscles tense through his soaked tunic as he battled the ocean. She sucked in her breath as another pain came; there was no doubting it now. Both times before she had bled so early as to have barely even dared to hope the seed had taken in her womb. This time, though, the babe had quickened and her belly had gently swollen and she had set sail so confident of taking Norway not just a new king but an heir besides. It seemed that the Varangian Sea, however, had other plans and if it were not base superstition, Elizaveta would almost dare to think the old gods of the north were playing with her.

  ‘My lady?’ Greta put a hand on her shoulder, leaned close. ‘My lady, do not be afeared. God will see us safe to shore.’

  Elizaveta tried to smile to bolster her poor maid’s simple faith, but at that moment, just as they were cresting a wave, another came from sideways on, curving across the first and catching the boat in a vicious surge. It slewed sideways, like a cart on ice, and shot to the ocean valley, landing with a crash that sent its helpless sailors tumbling. Elizaveta, trapped in her sleeping bag, could not grasp a hold in time and was flung against the mast. Pain knifed through her and she jerked in on herself.

  ‘My lady!’

  Greta’s scream was loud enough to pierce even the roar of the next wave and suddenly men were crowding around them. Elizaveta sought amongst the faces for Harald and saw him fighting to her side, white hair shining even amid this blonde Viking crew.

  ‘I am losing him, Hari.’

  For a moment his face clenched with pain, as if a sword had run through his guts, but he forced it aside, muttering love as he pulled her up and out of the treacherous bag in one easy movement. She saw the blood as he did, as they all did. It ran down her skirts and across the deck, mixing with the frothing churn of the ocean.

  ‘Hold the mast.’

  She did as he asked, clutching at the straining wood as Greta, her young eyes set hard, stood the other side and pressed her forehead against Elizaveta’s.

  ‘You must push, my lady.’

  Elizaveta nodded and gritted her teeth to try, but her body knew it already. She could feel the muscles digging in as tight as she dug into the mast. The boat rocked and tipped, the men at the oars roared with effort, the clouds swirled so close they could almost touch them, and the simple expulsion of a womb seemed ridiculously small at the heart of all that action. Elizaveta felt a strange pulse within and then the sickening slap of flesh against her bare ankle. Somewhere she heard Harald let out a single, shattering cry and then all went black.

  ‘Broth, Lily?’

  Elizaveta blinked awake to see Harald crouched at her side holding out a leather cup of rough soup. It smelled salty – everything smelled salty – but meaty too, and it was warm. Tentatively she released her hands from the sleeping sack and cupped them around it. The heat seeped into her wizened fingers and she drew in a ragged breath.

  ‘How . . . ?’ she asked.

  ‘’Tis calm enough now to set a fire.’

  Harald indicated the far end of the ship and, squinting through the squall, Elizaveta saw low flames glowing in a metal pit which squatted on the deck like a hot-bellied beast. Over it, dangling from a tripod, hung a big cooking pot, the steam escaping defiantly into the cold sea air.

  ‘Drink it, Lily,’ Harald urged. ‘Halldor made it specially. It will do you good.’

  Elizaveta resisted the instinctive response that nothing would do her good. She risked a look around. The boat was battered but intact. The waves no longer topped its sides and the clouds had cleared. She saw Halldor at the fire, eleven-year-old Aksel at his side. She saw Ulf still at the steer-board and Greta crouched at her feet. They were all here, all alive, and somehow she was alive too. She had to be strong for Harald. She had asked to come on this great journey – asked and asked – and she must not complain. But, oh, her belly ached and her heart ached even more.

  ‘Good news,’ Harald was saying, watching eagerly as she took sips of the broth. ‘We have sighted land.’

  ‘Truly?’ She sat up a little. ‘Where?’

  ‘To the west, praise God, or the navigators would have done a very poor job. The land birds are circling and the water is paler – we are close, Lily.’

  ‘Close to Norway?’

  ‘Sweden first, remember – your mother’s land.’

  A thrill ran through Elizaveta at the thought and she handed the broth back to Harald so she could ease herself out of the sleeping sack. Her legs felt shaky and her body ached all over but there was no pain and, praise God, no blood, save that dried onto her dress. It was a mess; the green wool as creased as an ancient’s neck and stained with salt and dried blood. She shivered with distaste.

  ‘I must change,’ she said, pressing her feet more firmly into the sturdy wooden boards. If the ocean had not drowned her she would not let grief do so either.

  ‘Change, Lily? Here?’

  ‘Where else? I do not see a bower floating past, do you?’

  Harald smiled wryly.

  ‘I am glad you are feeling better, my sweet.’

  Elizaveta leaned in against his chest and his arms went instantly around her.

  ‘I confess, Hari,’ she whispered up into the curve of his throat, ‘that I am sad.’

  ‘I too, my sweet. It was a terrible loss.’

  ‘Where . . . where is the baby?’

  ‘I gave him to the waves.’

  ‘Him?’ Her breath caught and for a moment it was a struggle to stay alive.

  ‘But you are well,’ Harald pushed on and her heart remembered to beat again. ‘You are well and that is what truly matters. God will see fit to grant us a child once we are safe on Norwegian shores.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I know it. Now, look!’

  He pointed and, following his finger, Elizaveta saw the rise of land breaking the flat horizon. The sun was sinking over it as if guiding their way and she felt a surge of hope as golden as this new land in the evening light. Halldor and Aksel came to stand at their side and she sensed the solidity of their care like a wall against her back.

  ‘Will we find shore before nightfall?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Sigtuna, where the royal palace lies, is far up the Bay of Malaren, but we will be there to dine with your aunt and uncle on the morrow.’

  Elizaveta tried to take in his words. Her mother’s brother, Anund, was King of Sweden and their sister Astrid had not remarried after Olaf’s death and resided here still. Elizaveta carried great gifts for them both from Ingrid and the thought of meeting her northern kin bolstered her will.

  ‘I must change,’ she said again. ‘Now.’

  She did not wish to be seen by even a peasant fisherman of this, her mother’s homeland, in anything less than her best and, bedsides, this dress was creased with sorrow. Let the waves have it; she would start afresh.

  ‘Elizaveta, welcome, welcome! How is my dear sister? How are all your siblings? How many now? Eleven of you, is it? The messengers can scarcely travel north quickly enough to tell me of one birth before another is on its way. Oh, but look at you – so beautiful. How did you get so dark, my dear? Your father I suppose.’

  Elizaveta flushed. Astrid was every bit as fair as Ingrid, with the same soft blonde hair and kind blue eyes, and the sight of her was a balm to Elizaveta’s aching heart. She blinked hard, grateful for her lessons in Old Norse and trying to decide which of her aunt’s tumbling questions to answer first. Thankfully, though, Astrid seemed not to need any response.

  ‘And you, my dear – how are you? The messengers told us you had lost a babe on board ship? How awful. You poor thing. The sea is a fearsome place at the best of times, never mind in such terrible travail. Let us get you to the bower immediately. I ordered the sauna heated th
e moment we were told of your ships in the mouth of the bay so it should be ready for us very soon. Oh, Elizaveta, I am truly glad to see you.’

  Elizaveta grinned over her shoulder at Harald as Astrid drew her away from the menfolk in the great hall, but she was grateful for her aunt’s kindness. Astrid was far more voluble than Ingrid but exuded the same soft care and after her tortuous journey Elizaveta was happy to fall into such tender administrations.

  She let herself be bathed, luxuriating in the soft rose-scented water that cleansed away the last of the blood still clinging to the insides of her thighs, and stepped into the blissful warmth of the sauna. The dry heat from the stone kiln at the centre of the wooden room was new to her, for in Kiev they boiled water on the top to fill it with steam, but as it crept into her frozen bones she felt life return to them at last and with it, hope. She looked to her belly, already shrunken back in on itself, and pressed it gently. There was no pain.

  ‘So, my dear,’ Astrid said, sliding her ample body in at her side, ‘you will be Queen of Norway?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Elizaveta agreed cautiously, ‘if Magnus welcomes us.’

  ‘Oh, he will. My stepson is not one for strife, God bless him.’

  ‘His supporters may be, though.’

  ‘Einar Tambarskelve? That’s true. I do not like that man. You can never tell what he is thinking, save that it will be something bad. But he is devoted to Magnus.’

  ‘He is devoted to his own cause.’

  ‘Which comes to much the same thing.’

  Elizaveta looked sharply at her aunt, sitting naked on the wooden benches, fanning herself with peacock feathers. Astrid winked.

  ‘I am not as silly as I look,’ she said, ‘though I find people – men in particular – rarely work that out. Magnus is fond of me, Niece. I will write to him personally, pressing your cause.’

  ‘You would do that for us?’

  ‘Of course. Would you not do it for your own sisters’ children?’

  Elizaveta considered.

  ‘I would,’ she agreed. ‘Well, maybe not Stasia’s but she wouldn’t need me to. She gets everything her own way.’

  Astrid laughed.

  ‘I used to think the same of Ingrid.’

  ‘Mother?’

  ‘Yes. She was Father’s legal daughter, you see, and I just the child of a concubine. That’s why he sent her to Kiev to be a Grand Princess and I got despatched to Olaf as his consolation prize.’

  ‘You were Queen of Norway,’ Elizaveta protested. ‘That, surely, is more than just a princess?’

  Astrid laughed again.

  ‘Perhaps, though do not say so to your mother. Besides, my reign only lasted a few years before Cnut robbed me of my title – may he rot in hellfire.’

  Her voice caught, suddenly harsh, and Elizaveta looked more closely at her in the comforting gloom of the sauna.

  ‘That, then, is truly why you would help me?’

  Astrid inclined her head.

  ‘You see much, Elizaveta. You will be a good queen, I think, and I will consider the circle of my fate complete if I can help one of my own blood to my throne again.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Bymarka, Norway, Easter 1046

  The horses broke through the trees and Elizaveta drew in a stunned breath at the long curve of green valley before her. Norway! She had been riding through it for four days now and still every turn in the path, or rise of a hill, or edge of a forest unrolled new vistas, each one seeming vaster than those that had gone before. Would she ever grow used to this country? Would she ever grow accustomed to the green spaces and the soft lakes and the rolling mountains? Would she ever cease to find it strange that she could turn all the way around and, despite the horizon being a day’s walk away, still see less than a handful of roofs? And would she ever truly feel like the queen of it all? Elizaveta thought of the court awaiting them just a short ride further on and nerves shook her insides like a falcon his jesses.

  Astrid had been true to her word and less than a month into the new year Harald had received a terse invitation to ‘talks’ with Magnus. They had followed the snowmelt over the Kjolen mountains to meet Norway’s young king who had ridden out to a hunting lodge on the border to greet them. Though he was now twenty-two, Magnus had not seemed to Elizaveta much changed from the bookish boy she remembered. He’d worn a magnificent crown and sat on a magnificent throne, carried up into the hills by poor cart ponies, but it had been Einar Tambarskelve who’d controlled the negotiations. For three long days they had huddled in a dark lodge in the forest and, as far as Elizaveta could see, no one had said a word they truly meant, smoothing over the hatred with much flowery discussion of ‘mutual interests’ and ‘the good of the country’.

  Still working hard to understand Old Norse, Elizaveta had grasped less of the words and more of the true meaning and it had all been very clear. The northern jarls, especially Einar and Kalv, were bitterly unhappy at losing their easily controlled young king but were afraid of Harald’s fierce Varangian troops. Magnus (or, rather, Einar) had declared that he would tolerate Harald as a joint ruler of Norway but he was clearly distrustful. Both sides were proceeding in a show of support and togetherness but it merely masked the bitter rivalry beneath as thinly as the ice crust over a firefestival galleon.

  Today that charade would truly begin for Magnus had ridden ahead to prepare the Easter court and now Harald and Elizaveta were to take their place at his side. It was to be a ‘celebration of unity’, but even so Harald’s men were in full armour and their eyes darted continuously around the beautiful landscape, looking for treachery. Elizaveta’s stomach fluttered again and she put a hand to it.

  ‘He kicks?’ Harald asked eagerly, riding up at her side.

  Elizaveta shook her head but smiled.

  ‘He will kick soon.’

  ‘Now that he is home,’ Harald agreed and Elizaveta prayed it would be so.

  This new child had, she believed, been conceived in Sweden at Christ’s mass – a true gift from God – and she prayed for it every day. She had rested as much as possible, even when journeying, letting Greta tend to her like a child and keeping so quiet that she had barely recognised herself but this time, she was certain, it would be worth it.

  ‘There, Lily – over there. Look!’ Harald’s voice suddenly rose like a child’s and he leaped up in his stirrups, pointing eagerly. ‘There is the royal residence. Is it not beautiful?’

  Elizaveta scanned the rolling green plain but could see no turrets or cupolas, no walls or gateways, nothing but an oversized peasant’s dwelling on the far slope of the valley.

  ‘Where, Hari?’

  ‘There!’ he said impatiently, pointing straight at the barn-like building. ‘Come on – race you!’

  He sounded so excited that Elizaveta spurred her horse on behind him, revelling in his happiness. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Ulf, Halldor and Aksel excitedly urging their own mounts forward and even young Greta kicking her pretty pony into a gallop. There must be more to this place than met the eye. Perhaps the palace was hidden down in the trees, behind the byre? But no, Harald was cantering straight up to the long wooden structure and as Elizaveta drew close she saw that it was the only building around.

  It stood nearly a hundred paces long, the low walls padded with moss and turf so it seemed to magically rise out of the very earth itself. The huge roof of thatched straw seemed similarly homegrown on the giant hillside and it was only as you moved closer that you could see the stamp of human endeavour on the massive farmhouse.

  The thatch stuck out over the walls, supported by a long run of pillars to create a sheltered walkway for shade in the summer and some protection from the harsh snows in winter. In the centre of the main wall a wooden porch jutted, richly carved and painted in glowing reds and blues to draw out the patterns and pictures. The doors were similarly decorated with vibrant vines and leaves and they were secured with an iron lock, though that small device seemed to be the only prote
ction for this supposedly royal residence. There were no earthworks, no walls, not even a palisade fence, and Elizaveta doubtfully drew rein at Harald’s side.

  ‘This is it, Hari?’

  ‘It is.’ He caught the look on her face. ‘You do not like it?’

  ‘No, no, it’s lovely. Beautiful. Just . . . very different to what I’m used to.’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ he agreed, handing her down from her horse, ‘but you will love it. Wait until you see inside. Everything in one place – so cosy.’

  Elizaveta blinked and rubbed at her eyes. Was this really Harald, her Harald – the man who’d fought pirates and defended empires and won battles, the man who, over the last three years, had bedded her anywhere and everywhere until her body often sang with longing just at the sight of him – her Harald admiring something for being ‘cosy’?

  ‘It has no defences?’ she hazarded.

  ‘No defences? Oh, no walls!’ He laughed. ‘Look around you, Elizaveta. You could see an enemy coming from miles away.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then you’d ride out and defeat them, of course.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘In Norway, my love,’ Harald told her, chucking her under the chin as her father might, ‘we say that you do not need stout walls for defence, just stout hearts.’ He looked up at the farm and suddenly seemed to shrink a little. ‘You think it a poor palace for a king, Elizaveta?’

  ‘No indeed, Harald.’ She rushed to reassure him. ‘It is beautiful, truly. I cannot wait to see inside.’

  ‘Good. It is very . . .’ He looked for a word to impress her. ‘Very grand. It was built by my brother, King Olaf.’

  ‘Then it must be special to you.’

  ‘Nearly as special as you are,’ he said, kissing her long and hard before whispering, ‘and one day it will all be ours.’

  ‘Sssh!’