‘You told me once that wood lives.’
Harald rolled his eyes.
‘You are determined to be contrary today, my sweet. I will find your eagle, I promise, and release him to the winds if it will make you happy but today, please, can we just watch the race – your race? Look – the flag is up!’
Elizaveta looked into the dense trees and the sight of the great red and white flag stirred her heart.
‘You must beat the gong,’ she said to Harald. He shook his head and she frowned. ‘You must, Hari. The boats will be ready and it is hard to keep them steady on the start.’
‘As you know?’
‘As I know, yes. Please sound it.’
‘No.’
‘But . . .’
‘You sound it.’ He pushed the hammer into her hand, taking hold of Maria, who was still tugging to be closer to the water, and nudging her forward. ‘And quickly, Lily – the boats are hard to keep steady on the start.’
All eyes were upon her so she resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at her infuriating royal husband and instead lifted the hammer and brought it down with all her might into the big copper gong. The soft sound, rich with memories, rippled across the water and, further up the hillside, the others sang out like echoes until, to a whoop from the excited crowd, the starting flag went down and the race was begun. Elizaveta fixed her gaze on the trees, looking for the flag at the first turn and praying Aksel’s red one would be raised. The crowd hummed curiously.
‘What happens now?’ someone asked behind Elizaveta.
‘They are taking the first turn,’ she explained, turning eagerly. ‘They will . . . oh.’ She stopped, for there was Tora, her big blue eyes as surprised as Elizaveta’s own at who had chosen to answer her. ‘They will drop into a pool halfway up,’ Elizaveta forced herself to say, ‘and the flag bearers will raise a colour in the trees to signal which rider enters the rapids first. There, oh there – look! It’s red!’ Unthinkingly she’d clutched Tora’s arm at the sight and now she dropped it like a hot coal. ‘That means Aksel is in the lead.’
‘Your squire?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s good then.’
Elizaveta nodded, unsure what to do now. She rarely spoke to Harald’s handfast woman and never kindly; it felt as strange as taking a sip of ale and finding it to be mead. Not unpleasant, just all wrong. Thankfully the canoes were soon tipping into view. The crowd upriver were leaping and cheering madly and the pulse of the competition rippled through the men and women at the wide finish, giving Elizaveta an excuse to turn away.
‘Go on, Aksel!’ she screamed. The young man was battling against a sharp Varangian, both boats tipping precariously as they dug their paddles into the churning water on the lower stretch of the race. ‘Go on!’
‘Dignity, Lily,’ Harald’s amused voice said in her ear.
‘This is no time for dignity,’ she retaliated, ‘they’re neck and neck.’
The crowd were roaring wildly, pushing up to the bank to see, and she tightened her hold on Maria who looked set to leap into the boat with their favourite. Then suddenly the other contender, trying to cut through along the near bank below them, caught his paddle on a root and slewed his boat. Aksel shot under the finish line, his rival coming through sideways just seconds behind and Elizaveta punched the air in delight.
‘He won, Mama,’ Maria called, every bit as pleased as her mother, and Harald bent down to sweep her into his arms. ‘Can I give him the prize, Papa?’ she demanded. ‘I’ll do it really well, promise. I’ll let him kiss my hand and I’ll say “Aksel Halldorsson, you are the winner” and I’ll give him the cup very carefully. I won’t drop it, promise I won’t. Please, Papa?’
She wound a strand of his fair hair around her finger, something she was often wont to do, and he laughed and kissed her nose.
‘It’s your mama’s cup to give, Maria.’
Maria looked at Lily, weighing up her chances, then back to Harald.
‘But you’re the king.’
Harald laughed louder.
‘Queens count for more than kings, Maria, believe me.’
‘Really? Is that, then, why you have two?’
The people around who had been indulgently watching their precocious princess sucked in their breath. Elizaveta glanced at Tora and to her astonishment the other woman came forward.
‘No, Maria,’ she said directly to the child in her soft voice, ‘that is just because your papa is very, very lucky. Now look, the winners are coming – you’d better get the cup ready.’
Maria, thankfully, scrambled to do so, Harald ducking after her to ‘help’, and the two wives were left together.
‘It’s less lucky,’ Elizaveta said under her breath, ‘than greedy.’
‘Probably,’ came back the reply, ‘but let’s keep that one to ourselves.’
Elizaveta felt a ridiculous giggle building inside her. Her lips twitched and Tora, seeing it, smiled too.
‘I’m meant to hate you,’ Elizaveta said.
‘You don’t seem to me like a woman who does what she’s meant to.’
‘I try not to.’
Elizaveta looked on as Maria, clutched in Harald’s arms, presented Aksel with his cup to cheers from the crowd. She noticed Halldor leaning against one prop of the grandstand trying to look nonchalant but beaming from ear to ear and was glad. He’d seemed out of sorts recently, grumpier than ever, and it was good to see him smile.
‘I rode the rapids once,’ she said, still watching the winners.
‘You?’
Elizaveta smiled even wider at Tora’s horror.
‘I wasn’t meant to. I sneaked out. Pretended I was a boy.’
‘What happened?’
‘I got into terrible trouble.’
‘I’m sure, but did you win?’
Elizaveta whirled round to look at Tora, intrigued at the question.
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I was stopped halfway by my father, but thank you for believing that I could have done.’
Tora shook her head.
‘I sometimes believe you could do anything, Elizaveta of Kiev.’
‘Bar produce a son.’
Tora’s jaw tightened and her hand went to her belly.
‘We don’t know that,’ she said stiffly and turned away just as her uncle, Jarl Kalv, sidled between them.
Elizaveta shivered and looked for an escape. The jarl who’d returned from the Orkneys was exactly how she remembered him from her brief childhood encounter – as lithe and sly as a forest-weasel – and she distrusted his every move.
‘A wonderful race,’ he said, his voice as soft as cooking fat. ‘A Kievan tradition?’
‘It is.’
‘It must bring back fond memories then, Princess.’
‘Queen. I am queen now.’
‘Of course. Foolish of me. You must miss Kiev.’
‘As you must miss Orkney.’
‘Ah, but it was never truly my home. I don’t believe anyone can ever truly be at home away from their birth country.’
‘You don’t? Then you must be very unadaptable. I find myself every bit as settled here in Oslo as I ever was in Kiev.’
That silenced him, but only for a moment.
‘There are traders here from the Rus, you know,’ he said, his voice sly. ‘I have been speaking with them. They were delighted to see the race. They said – what was it? – how pleased your father would be to see his influence spread so far.’
‘My mother too, I’m sure,’ Elizaveta agreed, looking desperately for a way past but the crowd around Aksel and his fellow riders was blocking her in.
‘Your mother? Ah yes . . .’
Elizaveta saw a dark gleam in Kalv’s eyes and her heart scudded.
‘Excuse me, I must . . .’
‘I have news of your mother actually. Sad news.’
Elizaveta would not look at him; would not give him the satisfaction.
‘She is gone to God.’ The world sw
am before Elizaveta’s eyes, as if the great fjord had risen up in a wave and swamped her. Ingrid – dead? She could not be. The happy memories that this glorious race had released inside her just a short time ago seemed to loom up and threaten to tear her from within. ‘There was a lump,’ Kalv’s voice went on. ‘It grew until it suffocated her heart, or so they say. I am sorry, Princess.’
‘Queen!’ Elizaveta rounded on him, hating him and clutching at that hatred to keep her afloat on the waters of rising grief. ‘I am the Queen of Norway – the only queen – and whatever nasty news you delight in bringing me, I ask you to remember that. All of you.’
She swung round to include Tora in her glare. For a moment the hurt in the other woman’s blue eyes – so very, very like Ingrid’s – almost sent her staggering, but she set her legs against it.
‘Dignity,’ she reminded herself, hissing it through her teeth so that the crowd, unnerved, parted swiftly before her. Tears swam but she would not let Kalv or any of the damned Arnassons see them. She owed her mother that much.
‘Aksel!’ Elizaveta reached her squire and clasped his hands and, to his astonishment, brought them to her lips and kissed them flamboyantly. ‘I’m so proud. You’ve honoured me with this win today, me and all my family. I shall ask my husband to make you a lord.’
And with that she grabbed her confused squire and led him away. She would save her grief until later. For now she would be the queen her mother had been proud of; the queen she had raised her to be; and the queen who would give Harald his King Olaf and silence the Arnassons once and for all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Oslo, September 1050
Pain, that’s all Elizaveta knew. She was swimming in pain, arms and legs flailing helplessly against it like a Danish prisoner in the mist, like a canoe beneath the rapids, like a dragon-ship folding in on itself and crashing through the ice to sink to oblivion.
‘Oblivion,’ she thought, forming the word like a liferaft, binding strakes of nothingness in her mind, yearning to sail. Her raft would have an eagle-prow and would take her out of this hell and into peace.
‘Mother,’ she rasped out. A shape formed before her eyes, moved away again. She put out a desperate hand. ‘Mother?’
‘No Lily, ’tis I, Harald. You . . . You are alive?’
‘Not yet.’
Elizaveta fought to open her eyes. Was she alive? The eagle-prow receded a little and she was almost sad to see it go. Something cold was laid on her face – cold and slimy and clinging. She thrashed her head desperately against it and it was whipped away again.
‘Sorry. I’m sorry. I thought it might help. Can you open your eyes, Lily?’
Could she? Slowly she forced her lids up and squinted out. A curtain of blonde hair shone in the dim lamplight.’
‘Hari?’
‘Lily, thank God.’ Harald leaned forward but then checked himself. ‘I’m not to touch you, they say.’
‘Who say?’ Even her throat hurt.
‘The midwives.’
He glanced fearfully over his shoulder and memory slammed into Elizaveta – the endless pains, the blood, Greta’s eyes clouding with fear even as her voice stayed calm, the midwife saying something about ‘wrong way round’ and everything, indeed, feeling turned and twisted and so, so painful.
‘The baby?’ she croaked.
‘The baby is well. She is a fine child, Lily.’
‘She?’
Disappointment thumped into her and she flinched at its impact on her bruised body.
‘She,’ Harald said firmly. ‘I have named her Ingrid.’
‘Ingrid?’ The name jerked out of her on a rush of hot tears. ‘Oh Hari, thank you. That’s beautiful.’
‘As is she, my sweet. As are you.’
The tears were soothing her eyes as the cloth had not and she let them flow gratefully.
‘I am not, I think,’ she managed, ‘quite at my best at the moment,’ and now Harald was crying too. Defying tuts behind him he put his arms around her and despite the pain searing through her body she clutched him close.
‘I thought you had died, Lily,’ he murmured into her hair.
‘Me? No. Too much worth living for to die.’
He laughed, a strangled sound, half mirth, half agony.
‘You have to be an empress, my sweet.’
‘You’ve taken Denmark? How long have I been lying here?’
He flushed.
‘Days, no more, and no, I’ve not taken it yet but I will. As soon as you are fully better I will sail on Svein again and this time I will bring you a throne.’
‘I have a throne, Hari.’ A new thought came to her. ‘Tora?’
Harald tensed.
‘She is delivered too,’ he said cautiously.
‘Another boy?’
Of course it was; she had known really that it would be, just hoped that perhaps she would have one too.
‘Another boy,’ Harald confirmed.
‘What have you named him?’ He looked to the floor. ‘Hari – what have you named him?’
Greta darted forward, alarmed at her harsh cry, but Harald waved her back. He tried to lay Elizaveta down on the mounds of pillows but she clutched at his arms.
‘I have called him Olaf, Lily.’ She closed her eyes. That was it then. It was over. Tora had, after all, won. The big, soft deer-queen had won and she – she might as well sail her eagle-raft into oblivion. ‘Lily, listen – you must listen. I have called him Olaf so you do not have to go through this again. The midwives told me, my sweet – they told me they warned you that another child might kill you, especially had it been a boy. I cannot have that, Lily, for I do not want an Olaf if it costs me you. Do you see that?’
Elizaveta opened one eye. She felt tired now, so tired; fortune’s wheel was riding over her. ‘Hold fast,’ her father’s voice said inside her head, rich and tearfully sweet, like a fruit preserved in ice. ‘Hold fast, Lily.’ She gripped the damp sheets.
‘Tora gives you kings,’ she objected.
‘Yes,’ Harald agreed. ‘It’s what she does best but you, my Lilyveta, you give me the world. Let her raise Norway’s next generation, but let you and I rule her now. Together.’
Elizaveta’s mind spun again to her childhood in Kiev. ‘Is that all you want for yourself,’ she’d demanded of Anastasia, ‘to produce kings?’ She’d been so scornful, so dismissive. ‘I’d like to be a queen,’ she’d gone on – she could almost hear herself now. ‘A queen in my own right who can help my husband rule and shape a nation.’ Had she set her own destiny then? Was this all her own wilful fault? Or her own wilful right?
‘Stay with me, Lily,’ Harald begged, her big warrior husband with his muscle-hard body and his Stikelstad scar and his beautiful hair.
She reached out a hand to him and he clasped it tight, so very tight that she felt the beautiful ring he had gifted her back in Kiev squeezing her tender flesh. She still hurt, she still hurt so very much, but she would heal.
‘Ingrid,’ she said softly, ‘my Ingrid – is she blonde?’
‘As an angel.’
Elizaveta smiled.
‘I will stay with you, Hari,’ she said softly, ‘if you will stay with me.’
‘Always,’ he agreed and on that promise, she slept.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Jutland, Denmark, August 1051
Harald stood at the prow of his new warship and scanned the Danish beach before him. He was determined to take this country from Svein and to take it fast so he could get back to Elizaveta. She was much stronger now but he worried that she would sicken and that, despite his promise, he would not be there for her if she did.
He put up a hand to the neck of his grand dragon-head prow. He was having a new ship built out on the west coast, one that would bear his wife’s precious eagle, but for now his brave dragon would have to do. At least his glorious landwaster flew high from the mast. Last winter Elizaveta had started to add a border in swirls of black and red but she had grown
weary of stitching and it went only halfway around the flag. Harald smiled at the thought of his impetuous, impatient wife and vowed to take Denmark for her this time.
It was hard though. Wretched Svein never seemed to know when to admit defeat. Time and again Harald had launched attacks on him but always the usurper had splintered them by playing what Elizaveta had dismissed as ‘silly games’, ducking away from full battles and preferring to lead Harald round Denmark’s endless islands, picking off single ships in ambush. It made him a very frustrating quarry and left Harald with little choice but to raid his towns and villages like an old-style Viking in the hope that his people would turn on him. Yet never they did.
It was endless cat and mouse and today Harald felt too much like the mouse. He’d had no reports of Svein’s fleet from his spies and the beach they were sailing towards looked suspiciously quiet. Usually the local militia would at least muster a defence but today the long stretch of sand sat still and bare.
‘Where are they?’ he said to Ulf, stood just behind him.
His marshal shrugged and pushed his curls from his face to look more closely.
‘Maybe they have the fever?’
‘Or maybe they are hiding.’
‘Well, they can’t do that for long and once they’re out in the open we’ll take them like we always do.’
Harald scanned the low horizon.
‘Something feels wrong.’
‘Maybe,’ Halldor said darkly, ‘that’s not on land but in our own craft.’
Harald grimaced. Halldor, as usual, had put his wizened finger on the heart of the matter. In his own ship all was well. Most of his personal warband of fifty had been with him for years and he knew he could rely absolutely on their courage, their skill and, above all else, their loyalty. They had sailed into many battles together and sailed out again intact. Most of these men had grown rich enough in Harald’s service to retire to farm and live out their lives in peace but every summer they came back to serve, not for the plunder, not even for the thrill, but because they belonged. Much the same was true of the other four ships at the centre of this fleet but the ones at either side . . .
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