The Constant Queen

by Joanna Courtney

  The huge door was creaking open before them and she kissed him back to silence him, though the words thrilled through her all the same. It seemed that Harald had become joint king of Norway without a drop of blood shed and for that they must be thankful, but as Magnus stepped out, feet planted proprietorially in the doorway, she knew their fight had only just begun. She shuddered and placed a hand to her belly as a small movement, more tickle than kick, jumped beneath her skin.

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘What is it?’ Harald asked.

  ‘I think maybe the babe truly is kicking – here.’ Elizaveta grabbed Harald’s hand and slid it round across her swelling belly. ‘Do you feel it?’

  ‘I do!’ He beamed. ‘I do feel it. Little Olaf is saying hello. He knows he is truly home.’

  ‘It seems so,’ Elizaveta agreed, awed, but now Magnus had stepped forward and the dark shadow of Einar Tambarskelve filled the doorway behind him.

  Elizaveta instinctively tried to move back but Harald held her tight.

  ‘My son is practising his war dance,’ he told their grim-faced greeters, hand still placed across her. ‘He is happy to be here in his ancestral home.’

  Magnus, however, just looked blankly at them and Einar shot forward, face as dark as a midnight squall.

  ‘Mayhap it will be a girl.’

  Harald beamed more broadly than ever.

  ‘A princess would be welcome too, Einar, especially if she is as gorgeous as her mother.’

  Magnus rolled his eyes.

  ‘All this devotion, Harald, is it seemly, do you think, for a king?’

  Harald stepped forward to shake his hand.

  ‘God gave us women, nephew,’ he said. ‘I am simply enjoying his gift.’

  Magnus tutted.

  ‘You will find, Uncle, that you have not as much time for such frivolities as women now you are a king.’ And with that Magnus turned, slim shoulders tight, to lead the way into the hall.

  ‘Frivolities?’ Harald mouthed to Elizaveta, amused, but they could hear the Norwegian court waiting excitedly inside the farm, and he moved purposefully to Magnus’s side as the younger king stepped through the door.

  Elizaveta fell obediently in behind them, though her heart was thudding as if a hundred babes were kicking it. She felt Einar’s louring presence over her shoulder and was grateful to note Ulf and Halldor slide in behind him with Aksel between them. Apart from Harald and Greta, these faithful warriors were her only true friends in Norway. She thought longingly of Sweden and Astrid’s soft, homely welcome and missed her aunt both for her hospitable self and as a shadow of her faraway mother.

  What would her family be doing in Kiev now, she wondered as she followed the two kings into the enormous farmhouse and up the central aisle? The Rus’ Easter service would be in Yaroslav’s magnificent new Hagia Sophia, with its glowing marble floors and rich mosaics and soaring cupolas. His druzhina would kneel before the gilded altar and take communion from a jewelled cup and the richly robed monks would sing to the resonant notes of the silver pipe organ.

  Then they would all process through the newly paved streets of Yaroslav’s growing city whilst a mass of Kievans threw flowers before them, and on up into the great kremlin with its fountain and its bronze horses and its three stone halls. There would be a hundred musicians and acrobats and clowns with new tricks to amaze them and they would feast on a range of fragrant dishes from all over the vast tangle of the Rus lands and beyond.

  The contrast to her current situation could not be more pronounced, but the great and good of Norway were leering at her from either side, and she had no more time for musings. Already the tiny procession had made it to the top table and Magnus was taking his place on the great throne, leaving Harald to move into the lesser chair on his right. The men were joint kings in everything but Einar had insisted that when they were together Magnus would have precedence and he clearly intended to enforce that rigidly. Elizaveta moved past him towards her own place, feeling all eyes upon her, though not, as in Kiev, to admire her, but more as if waiting for her to fall. She sighed and Harald leaned solicitously in.

  ‘You are well, my sweet?’ he asked, as he handed her into her seat.

  ‘Quite well. Just thinking of home.’

  He frowned slightly.

  ‘This is your home, Lily.’

  ‘Of course. I know that, Harald, truly and I am so glad to be here with you – a solid partnership at the head of a nation makes the nation solid too.’ He squinted at her and she blushed. ‘’Tis something my father used to say.’

  ‘And he was right.’ Harald kissed her firmly. ‘We will build our own farm, my sweet. We will build it however you want it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Of stone?’

  Harald frowned again.

  ‘I’m not sure that would be possible, Elizaveta – you’ve seen enough of Norway to know that trees are more plentiful here. Besides, it is prettier. Wood lives.’

  ‘It does, Hari,’ she agreed, looking around at the decorated pillars and panels and roof-beams, ‘and there are some truly talented carvers here. It’s just so . . . brown.’

  ‘Of course it is brown, Lily. What other colour would it be? Is the baby rotting your brain?’

  He laughed but there was an edge to his mirth and she knew that over the riotous, nervous feasting ahead she would need him close. Now was not the time to tell him that the dark, heavy colours of this strange Norwegian farm depressed her spirit.

  ‘It must be,’ Elizaveta said lightly and squeezed his arm as Einar took a seat alongside a large, sour-faced woman.

  ‘My wife,’ he said shortly, ‘Lady Brigid.’

  Brigid leaned forward and glared at Elizaveta.

  ‘The Arnassons should be here at any moment,’ she announced without a word of courtesy. ‘I am so excited. I haven’t seen dear Tora since she was newly widowed and it’s been far too long.’

  Elizaveta’s throat contracted. Brigid spoke fast, and her Norse was thick with a northern inflection, but Elizaveta did not mistake her meaning. This was another reason she needed Harald close – the infamous Arnasson family were due here at any moment to ‘welcome’ the new arrivals and she was dreading meeting Harald’s one-time betrothed. Harald had told her a little of Finn, the man who had raised him and who he so clearly admired. He was looking forward to seeing him again and that worried Elizaveta, but not nearly as much as the fact that he had told her nothing at all of Tora.

  ‘You are queen,’ she reminded herself sternly, ‘and you are carrying Norway’s heir.’

  She placed quiet hands over her swelling belly. This child was as much her weapon in this strange new country as Harald’s sword was his and she cradled it tight as the keen neigh of a horse cut into the hall from outside.

  ‘Here they are now,’ the dour Einar said, sounding disorientatingly jolly at the prospect of trouble.

  All heads turned to the door, then back to Elizaveta, as the court waited eagerly to see their new queen meet the woman they believed she had supplanted. Elizaveta rose slowly. She reached for Harald’s hand but he had stepped away, joining Magnus at the front of the dais as the doors swung open. Elizaveta shivered and Aksel leaped forward, offering his strong young arm. She clutched at it, tears of gratitude springing to her eyes, as a man strode into the hall and bowed low.

  ‘Finn!’ Harald called and jumped down to clasp the man’s shoulders.

  ‘King Harald,’ Finn said carefully, ‘welcome home. We have missed you, have we not, Niece?’

  He turned and drew forward a woman dressed in a gown of purest blue, topped with a snow-white cloak of ermine fur. Elizaveta watched, frozen, as Harald took her hand and, bowing lower than she’d ever seen him do before, kissed it. Her eyes, though, were stuck on the woman who was everything she suddenly realised she had known she would be.

  Tora Arnasson was tall and voluptuous, with soft, feminine features and a curtain of honey-blonde hair. Her eyes w
ere wide and as blue as her dress and her skin was pale and clear. She was the perfect Norse woman, beautiful in a way Elizaveta had always craved. Indeed, as she stood there, teetering on the dais of an unknown hall full of unknown customs, the dark walls seemed to crowd in and the great wooden rafters threatened to fall on her head and the smoke from the huge central hearth pricked at her eyes. For this woman, this rival, was the incarnation of Ingrid, her mother, and Elizaveta was torn between an ice-cold desire to see her dead and a sharp, intense longing to throw herself into her arms.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Tora, painfully aware of the woman stood just above her on the royal dais, forced herself to keep her head high and her eyes up as she greeted Harald. Even after sixteen years, it was unmistakably him, but he looked so different. He was even taller than he’d been at fifteen and much broader. His arms alone looked twice their previous width and she hated to imagine the number of sword-swings it had taken to build so much muscle. His face, once so smooth, was lined and weather-worn and down one side, as if the devil had drawn across him, was a long trace of a wound, faint, but to Tora’s eyes as livid as if it were new-won.

  ‘Stikelstad?’ she whispered, stepping forward and putting up a hand but not daring to touch.

  Harald’s own fingers went to his cheek and he nodded. For a moment the word seemed to shimmer between them, laden with memories, and then, as if snatching it away, he said: ‘Much has changed since then.’

  Instinctively Tora looked over his shoulder to his new wife.

  ‘And many promises have been broken,’ she said sharply.

  Goodness, the Rus girl was beautiful – so slim and fragile, like a sprite, and with such fine features. Her eyes were as dark as her night-time hair, her skin an alluringly dusky shade and her lips full and inviting. She was the opposite to big, blonde Harald in every possible detail and for a second Tora could almost see them entwined between the sheets. She blinked the rogue image away. This girl was the total opposite to herself too and if this was the sort of beauty that had captivated Harald down in the south she stood no chance. Never had.

  ‘I am truly sorry, Tora,’ Harald was saying, his voice low, ‘if you had . . . expectations of me.’

  Tora had so much to say to that, so much she wanted to remind him of, to demand answers for but not now, not here with all of Norway watching on.

  ‘You must introduce me, Harald, to your wife,’ she said loudly, cutting through his attempt at intimacy.

  Harald looked stunned and Tora was glad; she was not here to make him content – not now.

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed, recovering. ‘Er, Lady Tora Arnasson, this is Queen Elizaveta.’

  ‘Of Kiev?’ Tora asked, taking a single step forward.

  ‘Of Norway,’ the dark girl said stonily, taking a mirrored step.

  Elizaveta did not hold out her hand and for that, at least, Tora was grateful for she could no more have kissed it than she could a weed-strung toad. Instead, they both bowed their heads in a curt greeting, more for the eagerly watching Norwegians than each other.

  ‘And how,’ Tora asked, ‘do you find your new country?’

  ‘Very agreeable,’ came the swift reply, laced with an exotic southerly inflection, but Tora saw the edge of Elizaveta’s full lips twitch and knew she’d hit a nerve. Good.

  ‘It must be very quiet after the bustle of home,’ she suggested.

  Elizaveta’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘This is home,’ she shot back, ‘and I welcome the quiet – it is good for the babe.’

  One of her slim hands rested pointedly on what Tora now saw was a swelling belly. Damn. She’d heard tell of a miscarriage, maybe more than one, but news of this new pregnancy had not reached her. She stared at Elizaveta’s hand. Was that a wedding ring? It was the finest jewel Tora had ever seen and anger, at last, flared inside her. This slip of a creature had Harald’s love, his wealth and now his child too.

  ‘Of course,’ she forced out. ‘I’m sure we would all hate you to lose this one.’

  It was a nasty thing to say, she knew, and a part of her hated herself for it, but why should she not be nasty? She had thought, after the sufferance of her marriage to Pieter, that God had seen fit to reward her with Harald’s return but Elizaveta of Kiev had stolen him. She was not going to make that easy for her.

  ‘Thank you,’ Elizaveta said as sweetly as if the feeling had been honestly meant, though Tora did not doubt that, despite the differences in their language, she had understood her true intent. ‘And you are right – I should sit. Excuse me.’

  She turned then and sank gracefully into the beautifully carved seat that marked her out as queen, placing a proprietorial hand on the arm of Harald’s seat at her side.

  ‘Please be seated, Lady Tora,’ Harald said, waving her towards a gap on the bench as he slid in beside the Rus traitress.

  Unable to refuse, Tora found herself between a peculiar squat man and a bright-eyed soldier with a mop of wild curly hair.

  ‘My comrades-in-arms,’ Harald said proudly, as if they were meant as some sort of pleasure for her, ‘Halldor Snorrason and Ulf Ospakkson. We have fought many battles together but they, like me, are ready to settle now.’

  ‘I’m not,’ the gruff one called Halldor said. ‘I seek no wife, Hari, so do not go finding me one.’

  Tora jumped at his tone and Ulf leaned towards her.

  ‘Don’t mind him, my lady. He’s half troll.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Ulf smiled.

  ‘He wouldn’t know beauty if it jumped out at him with a sword.’

  Tora looked into this Ulf’s eyes, big and brown, trying to fathom him out. Was he being nice to her? With his strange accent – a mixture of tongues that told of much travelling – it was hard to tell.

  ‘You have been with Harald for a long time?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘Since Stikelstad.’ She felt herself wince and he saw it too. ‘’Twas a terrible battle,’ he admitted. ‘I was newly come from Iceland with my brother, Bjorn, and thought I’d landed in hell itself. I lost Bjorn that day but I found Halldor and together we helped Harald flee the field. They have been my brothers ever since.’

  ‘That’s good.’ It was a stupid thing to say. Good?! What was ‘good’ about a friendship forged in the mud and blood of a battlefield? ‘I mean . . .’

  Ulf put up a gracious hand.

  ‘I appreciate your sentiment, my lady. We three have shared more blood than had we been born of the same womb. It binds us.’

  His dancing eyes stilled for a moment and Tora thought of Harald’s first words to her – ‘much has changed’. Harald and his men had seen places and people and battles that were beyond her imagination. Did the Rus princess understand more?

  ‘You have spent much time in Kiev,’ she said lightly as servers brought round the first course. ‘Is it a very grand place?’

  ‘Oh yes and growing grander every day. It stands upon a great mountain range, the whole city spreading out across the plateau and all enclosed within walls three men high. It has twenty-one churches inside and . . .’

  ‘Twenty-one? In one place?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘Why so many?’

  ‘Well, I suppose because there are ten thousand people living there and they all need somewhere to worship.’

  Ten thousand! Tora felt faint. Were there even that many in the whole of Norway?

  ‘You will be bored here, then?’ she stuttered.

  ‘Me? No. No, I am ready to build a farm and find a wife.’

  Ulf looked intently at her and anger fired inside her again. So this was the man to whom Harald would see her ‘wed with great dignity’. No way. No way was she being forced into marriage with one of Harald’s warrior friends as some sort of consolation prize.

  ‘I am bound by a long-established contract,’ she said stiffly.

  Ulf nodded slowly, his crazy curls bobbing.

  ‘I heard,’ he said, ‘but I do not think that
contract stopped you marrying before?’

  ‘That was not my choice.’

  ‘I see. But your “choice”, Tora . . .’

  ‘Lady Tora.’

  ‘Your choice, Lady Tora, is surely no longer available to you.’

  ‘And you consider yourself an adequate replacement?’

  Ulf laughed.

  ‘Clearly you do not.’

  Tora shook herself. She was acting the stranger again and she did not like it.

  ‘I’m sorry. I do not mean to be rude.’

  Ulf shrugged then pointed at Halldor, deep in conversation with the Rus impostor.

  ‘Halldor there had a woman once, a slave girl. He loved her very dearly but she died giving him a son.’

  Tora’s eyes opened wide. She looked to Elizaveta’s belly and back to Ulf.

  ‘What on earth are you saying?’

  He followed her gaze and flushed.

  ‘Not that! Lord, no. May God keep Queen Elizaveta safe. I was simply saying that Halldor has never found anyone to replace her.’

  ‘Oh.’ Tora felt ridiculous. Was this big, bluff soldier pitying her? She looked awkwardly past him and was grateful to see her sister being shown into a seat on his other side.

  ‘Ah, Count Ulf,’ she said hastily, ‘meet Johanna, my little sister.’

  He looked around.

  ‘Not so very little,’ he said admiringly as Johanna turned her big eyes up at him and suddenly Tora found herself free of her awkward conversation. Indeed, of any conversation.

  She looked across at Harald. Finn was standing, leaning easily on the back of the new king’s seat, the two men chatting as if nothing had happened between them, as if Harald had not betrayed their family by bringing home this darkly beautiful Slav bride. And now they looked over at Ulf and Johanna and it was clear from their nudges and nods where that was going. Tora was being smudged out already, painted over, left to rot as the court wound its fickle way onwards.

  ‘No!’ she said into her meal, making the troll-man jump.

  Tora hastily stabbed a piece of elk and stuffed it into her stupid mouth but the word rang round and round in her head all the same – no, no, no, no, no! She wasn’t going to disappear; why should she? She cleared her throat.